While You Were Away

End-of-semester news and fun from around campus

Vegan muffins, hash, bacon, and other plant-based options are served at a cafeteria counter

This year's Campus Services holiday breakfast featured a "plant-forward" station. 
Photograph by Robert Fitta/Harvard Magazine

Ian Frazier ’73, the journalist and humorist who has taken up the pen for The New Yorker’s year-end “Greetings, Friends!” poetic tribute to annual high- and low-lights, worked in an especially topical couplet in that magazine’s December 23 issue. Frazier (profiled here) niftily memorialized the unusual doings during at The Game this past November thus:

Just as at halftime, Harvard-Yale,
Climate alarm has ripped the veil. 

Read a news account of the divestment protest appears here.

Locally, the humorists at Satire V celebrated the end of the semester by melding the debut of the new Gen Ed. curriculum (and its marquee course, “Tech Ethics”) with increasing concerns about the role of online behemoths—like Facebook, famously founded by Mark Zuckerberg ’06, LL.D. ’17—in subverting privacy, circulating false information, and lending themselves to heightened political polarization. “Facebook ‘Primed and Ready’ to Hire All Students that Fail GENED 1058: Tech Ethics” is a model satire, except, perhaps, for the “that” in the headline, where a “who” is preferred.

The Campus Services holiday breakfast—an annual fête in Annenberg Hall that brings together dining-hall workers, facilities and grounds staff, and many others (including staff members of this magazine) in a lovely, relaxed, social setting—upped its game this year. Alongside the traditional eggs, lox and bagels, and more, a “plant-forward station” offered quinoa “hash” and a plant-based “bacon.” Another harbinger of things to come, consistent with emerging thinking about how to tame the climate-change impact of agriculture and food production, and dining services’ earlier response to changing student requests

Read more articles by John S. Rosenberg

You might also like

Highlights from Harvard’s Past

The rise of Cambridge cyclists, a lettuce boycott, and Julia Child’s cookbooks

Wadsworth House Nears 300

The building is a microcosm of Harvard’s history—and the history of the United States.

In Sermon, Garber Urges Harvard Community to ‘Defend and Protect’ Institutions

Harvard’s president uses traditional Memorial Church address to encourage divergent views.

Most popular

What Trump Means for John Roberts’s Legacy

Executive power is on the docket at the Supreme Court.

How Birds Lost Flight

Scott Edwards discovers evolution’s master switches.

Harvard’s Class of 2029 Reflects Shifts in Racial Makeup After Affirmative Action Ends

International students continue to enroll amid political uncertainty; mandatory SATs lead to a drop in applications.

Explore More From Current Issue

Two women in traditional Japanese clothing sitting on a wooden platform near a tranquil pond, surrounded by autumn foliage.

Japan As It Never Will Be Again

Harvard’s Stillman collection showcases glimpses of the Meiji era. 

A person walks across a street lined with historic buildings and a clock tower in the background.

Harvard In the News

A legal victory against Trump, hazing in the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, and kicking off a Crimson football season with style

Illustration of tiny doctors working inside a large nose against a turquoise background.

A Flu Vaccine That Actually Works

Next-gen vaccines delivered directly to the site of infection are far more effective than existing shots.