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Your independent source for Harvard news since 1898

January-February 2019

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Letters

Letters on admissions, academic presses, the solicitor general, and more

President Larry Bacow on Truth

Affirmative action, donor and staff preferences, and other Harvard College admissions challenges

With appreciation to two Harvard Magazine artists

The College Pump

Photograph by Harvard Magazine/JC

Re-landscaping Massachusetts Hall, making the entrance to Harvard Yard more welcoming

Treasure

Journal from Houghton Library/Photograph by Harvard Library Imaging Services

Houghton Library, MS Eng 1610, vol. 2, frontispiece

…and a possible clue in the stacks

In this Issue

Photograph by Amélie Benoist/Science Source

Daniela Lamas and the practice of post-ICU care

A formal wartime portrait

Photograph from the Mathew Brady Collection/Library of Congres

Brief history of the image of a hero: 1822-1885

Illustration by Taylor Callery

Ethics and the dawn of decision-making machines

Philip J. Deloria

Photograph by Jim Harrison

Philip Deloria studies American Indians and the contradictions that made America.

Letters

Letters on admissions, academic presses, the solicitor general, and more

President Larry Bacow on Truth

Affirmative action, donor and staff preferences, and other Harvard College admissions challenges

With appreciation to two Harvard Magazine artists

Right Now

Illustration by John Holcroft

Economist William Kerr argues for streamlining immigration to attract high-skilled talent from abroad.

Illustration by Robert Neubecker

Cherubic features benefit black male CEOs, but not other groups, underscoring the complexity of social disadvantage.

Illustration by Pete Ryan

The immune systems of “elite controllers” point to HIV’s vulnerabilities.

Harvard Squared

A serene and snowy moment in historic Portland

Photograph courtesy of Corey Templeton Photography

Enjoying Portland, Maine, in the “off-season”

An example of a quipu from Peru's Nazca Province 

Gift of Robert Woods Bliss, 1942 © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, PM# 42-28-30/4532

“Cecilia Vicuña: Disappeared Quipu,” at the MFA

A miniature version of a New England high-post bed (ca. 1750-1765), with historically accurate bed furnishings by Natalie Larson

Object on loan courtesy of Natalie and Bruce Larson

Photograph courtesy of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art

A Wadsworth Atheneum and Museum exhibit reveals how we once slept.

Tubing at Nashoba Valley Ski Area

Photograph courtesy of Nashoba Valley Ski Area

Best snow-tubing spots around Greater Boston

Public domain

Why Resolutions Work Best in Winter

John Harvard's Journal

Photograph from the OxBlue Construction Cameras

Alongside a huge applied-sciences center, a toehold for art-making

Supporters of affirmative action protested in Harvard Square the day before SFFA v. Harvard went to trial...

Photograph by Liu Jie/Xinhua/Alamy Live News

The lawsuit that could determine the fate of affirmative action

Ruth Okediji

Photograph by Jim Harrison

A Nigerian-born professor who brings unusual perspective to intellectual-property law

Coming together: Greater Boston biomedical and life-sciences panelists (from left) Eric Lander (Broad Institute), Vasant Narasimhan (Novartis), and Laurie Glimcher (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute), with moderator Susan Hockfield (MIT)

Photograph by Kris Snibbe/Harvard Public Affairs and Communications

A $200-million gift from the Blavatnik Family Foundation paves the way.

Source: Harvard University Fact Book

A survey of the University’s annual financial report

A growing, and more scientific, professoriate and a budget breakthrough

Illustration by Mark Steele

When the Law School made thin ice…and other headlines from Harvard’s history

National Academy and NIH notables, and a pioneering Crimson leader

Tomiko Brown-Nagin

Photograph by Rose Lincoln/Harvard Public Affairs and Communications

New Radcliffe dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin has a blueprint for action.

Policing and students, Title IX changes, and public opinion toward higher education

Mohsen Mostafavi 

Photograph by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Public Affairs and Communications

Harvard design dean departs and other news

Illustration by Michael Parkin/Folio Art

The Undergraduate considers the composition of Harvard College.

Cook’s tour: Harvard wideout Jack Cook leaves Yale’s Deonte Henson in the dust on a third-quarter, 15-yard touchdown. The score gave the Crimson a 28-24 lead, which it would not surrender. 

Photograph by Tim O’Meara/The Harvard Crimson

A resilient, crowd-pleasing football season, with talented sophomores surfacing

Montage

After the harvest, Kelby Russell, who makes cold-climate white wines, stands in a vineyard overlooking New York’s Seneca Lake.

Photograph by Robyn Wishna

Why the vineyards of New York called Kelby Russell home

A boat cast adrift: visualizing the text, “Though the orange tree isle / Remain fast in its color, / ’Tis not such change, / But this drifting boat’s whither / That is beyond all knowing.”

Image courtesy of the Harvard Art Museums Imaging Department ©President and Fellows of Harvard College

A magnificent set of images, published—and exhibited

Liz Glynn

Photograph by Evelena Ruether/Liz Glynn Studio

In Liz Glynn’s massive installations, big questions about the meaning of value

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Bess Wohl

Photograph by Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images

Bess Wohl writes plays from an actor’s perspective.

Making scant (and mute) evidence tell its story: the empress Sabina, sculpted A.D. 136-138

Photograph by Carole Raddato/Wikimedia

Recent books with Harvard connections

Illustration by Matt Kenyon

Economists revisit an unsettled economic policy.

Alumni

Cellist and teacher Laurence Lesser is celebrating his forty-fifth year at the New England Conservatory of Music.

Photograph by Andrew Hurlbut

A cellist and conservatory teacher who has never stopped learning

Degree-program affiliates now number 53, with 15 in the Senate and 38 in the House.

The College Pump

Photograph by Harvard Magazine/JC

Re-landscaping Massachusetts Hall, making the entrance to Harvard Yard more welcoming

Treasure

Journal from Houghton Library/Photograph by Harvard Library Imaging Services

Houghton Library, MS Eng 1610, vol. 2, frontispiece

…and a possible clue in the stacks