Cambridge 02138

That COVID cover, fracking, Radcliffe's welcome

Mental Health

Thank you forNo Going Back to Normal” and the compelling picture it provided of the very real crisis in youth mental health and the considerable detail it offered on the many thoughtful responses to the challenges it presents (July-August, page 35). Among the clinicians and educators in the Harvard community and Boston area interviewed, however, only one mentioned support for parents. Dr. Archana Basu, clinical psychologist at MGH and HMS, described an integrated care model offering “brief interventions…for young children and their parents” often in groups.

Even though Dr. Jack Shonkoff said, “The first thing…is making sure that we’re protecting and empowering the adults who take care of [young people]” and even though Ibrahim Berry credits his parents, family, and teachers for helping him “make it through stronger” the article did not mention parenting education and support.

My experiences helping my sons navigate their rocky adolescent roads involved getting them professional help, of course, but it was peer support, especially parent peer support, that helped us all make it through stronger. Educators and psychologists must recognize that the young people they treat are not orphans! Yes, I know, parents can be part of the problem and need help too, but at the same time, they…we…can help each other make positive changes.

Eve Sullivan, M.A.T. ’66
Cambridge

Admissions

In regard to the excellent column “Admissions Agenda” (7 Ware Street, July-August, page 5), I encourage Harvard to consider the approach advocated by Stanford professor David Grusky, director of the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, and his colleagues, Peter Hall and Hazel Markus.

Currently, notwithstanding Harvard’s admirable efforts to promote diversity, about half of those approximately 55,000 applicants admitted come from the upper 1 percent of families in terms of their socioeconomic status.

Using Grusky’s approach, qualified applicants for undergraduate admission would be divided into quintiles based on their families’ socioeconomic status. Using current admissions criteria, one-fifth of the entering class would be chosen from each quintile. This approach would ensure that a cross section of students would be admitted, one that would likely include a better diversity in terms not only of socioeconomic status, but also of race and ethnicity, than now occurs.

Tom Ehrlich ’56, LL.B. ’59
Palo Alto, Calif.

Editor’s note: Ehrlich is past Stanford Law School dean, University of Pennsylvania provost, and Indiana University president.

 

I understand that any intrusion into the way Harvard operates is unwelcome, presumptuous intermeddling by officious pipsqueaks, but this cloak of invisibility and glorious mystery under which the admissions office operates does bear scrutiny. Granted they have never so far made an error in any decision, still the future holds a risk of vulnerability.

The myth that based on the paltry documentation provided by an applicant—much of which has been tampered with, enhanced, or even written in toto by others—coupled with similarly inauthentic essays and a transcript from a boosting partisan institution and glamorized grandiose panegyrics, an admissions officer can comprehend the essence, worth, and potential of a complex adolescent is obvious balderdash.

The idea that we don’t dare touch the wings of the Harvard methodology is counter to the very idea of a university—the ever sharpening of our perception of the universe. Consideration of required SAT scores was not replaced by something more precise or more unbiased, it was simply dropped. Is the admissions office telling us they have the power and authority to intuit who should learn calculus and who needn’t?

I applaud the concession that (at long last) “it might be worth the effort” to articulate what kind of student body Harvard seeks. Have they been groping aimlessly in the dark all these years or have they been guided by some nefarious shameful principles better kept hidden?

Daniel I. A. Cohen, Ph.D. ’75
New York City

Thoughtful and well-written piece. You didn’t reflexively defend Harvard’s existing methodology, which was refreshing. Your reference to “the complexity and mystery of its current admissions processes” really gets to the heart of the matter. Whatever Blum’s motivations, and however odious the makeup of the current SCOTUS, Harvard has only itself to blame for its own lack of transparency, which has led to this pass.

Let’s put it simply: Harvard and its peers are, most people would agree, defined first and foremost as academic institutions. Historically, none of them have ever signaled that they see anything else as their core mission. Based on that definition, an admissions policy driven by academic qualifications is the only one that can readily be justified. To clear the air and remove the cloud of hypocrisy hanging over admissions, Harvard can simply state that it is not, in fact, primarily an academic institution, but, say, a fancy social club that grants degrees. Such a statement would clear the way for legacy- and athletics-based affirmative action (which I do not support), or any set of preferences Harvard wishes to pursue, including that of providing an on-ramp for disadvantaged minorities or talented artists (which I fully support). It would render moot the entire debate along with all the expensive lawsuits.

My point is not to defend the SAT—I have previously published letters in this forum advocating that Harvard stop using the SAT altogether. It’s just a matter of intellectual honesty about Harvard’s mission.

Charles Hsu ’79
San Francisco

“Admissions Agenda” (July-August, page 5) again has presented “affirmative action” to Harvard College as a noble enterprise. It is not. It is discrimination based upon color. That’s the reason for Students for Fair Admissions’ existence and the U.S. Supreme Court’s grant of its petition for certiorari. In 1966, California voters in an initiative prohibited such a quota system of discrimination in “public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

Dissatisfied proponents of allowing discrimination in such operations “on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin” have since tried twice to eliminate such policy from the California constitution. Voters in the largest liberal state in the nation have rejected such efforts. (I entered Dartmouth College at a time it still imposed a quota regarding Jewish applicants.)

Harvard College’s student body should be free of admission quotas fueled by race, sex, gender, or national origin, just as the law school has been in my lifetime.

Judge Quentin L. Kopp (Ret.), LL.B. ’52
San Francisco

Editor’s note: Harvard’s own experience with a quota on Jewish admissions, under A. Lawrence Lowell, president from 1909 to 1933, is widely recognized and deplored today as a shameful chapter in the University’s history. Admissions quotas are illegal, and no one alleges that Harvard does not comply with the law. Like those of many peer institutions, the College’s admission’s practices—in place and sanctioned by the Supreme Court since the Bakke decision in 1978—permit consideration of race within holistic review of an applicant’s dossier. The SFFA case, the most recent in a series of such challenges, attacks the legality of that practice.

 

To read an article in Harvard Magazine that admits to the flaws within Harvard College’s admissions process is refreshing. However, key points were missed.

The College’s white population dropped from a majority to a plurality for the first time in its history in the 2010s, the same decade that Edward Blum sued Harvard over its use of race-based affirmative action in admissions decisions. Yet the College admits a disproportionate amount of students from private schools in the East Coast that have a majority white student body. Public schools such as Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech (I am an alumnus) also send their students to schools like Harvard, and the admissions policies of these elite public schools have come into question due to their reliance on standardized tests, which have been shown to favor people of certain racial groups and the wealthy.

As someone who is half black and Hispanic, I am well aware of the racist undertones associated with the Harvard lawsuit. I believe that the article published last month called out those racist undertones. Unfortunately, we cannot have a discussion on a meritocratic admissions process without questioning the racial and financial privilege that many students who attend Harvard College come from. I hope Harvard is willing to have that conversation.

Rafael Santiago, A.L.M. ’19
Brooklyn, N.Y.

The COVID Cover

I could not bring myself to read the July-August Harvard Magazine. It bewilders me to read the cover line, “The Post-COVID Commencement.” We are not post-COVID, at least not in Maine, where I reside.

It confuses me how your magazine has elected to publish this headline on the front cover. The message this sends to readers is a false, even misleading, message—one that could lead to loss of life, and seems casually irresponsible.

Halya Zadoretzky, E.D.M. ’87
Eliot, Maine

Both my college education and my Kennedy School education taught me that it’s important to get facts correct in writing. That’s why the photo and title “Post-COVID Commencement” immediately struck me as genuinely inaccurate.

There are still sporting events and live shows being canceled, because athletes and entertainers have COVID. The week that the most recent Harvard Magazine, with the inaccurate title, arrived was also the week that my husband and I were unable to go to visit our daughter, son-in-law, and three-year-old and infant grandsons, as planned, because they all got COVID.

I sincerely believe that a title of “Post-COVID-crisis Commencement” or “Post-COVID Lockdown Commencement” would have been less dramatic but much more accurate than the title chosen, which suggested that the danger and inconvenience of COVID have passed.

Surely, we can be relieved that life has, in many respects, gone back to close to normal without misrepresenting the current situation.

Hilary Wolpert Silver, M.P.P. ‘84
West Hartford, Conn.

Great and joyous to celebrate Commencement in a close-to-normal way, but the cover title of “The Post-COVID Commencement” is off-target. Sadly COVID is very much still with us, and killing each day.

Joe Campbell Jr., M.P.P. ’78
Ridgewood, N.J.

Editor’s note: Is the pandemic over? No. Is the most intense period of grave illness past? Yes, based on careful testing, vaccination, use of antiviral therapies, and more. The cover story explains that—and compares today to May 2020, when the magazine showed an empty Tercentenary Theatre as the campus was depopulated. So, it was a cover about how things have changed. The University, which took extraordinary precautions early in the pandemic, and maintained them through the 2021-2022 academic year, based on its scientists’ expertise and government guidance, felt it was safe to stage in-person graduation exercises, subject to participants’ careful COVID testing; we covered those functions.

Fracking

I respectfully challenge Professor Petros Koutrakis (“Fracking’s Deadly Toll,” to identify exactly the location(s) referenced in his statement, “Today, wastewater from these fracking facilities is disposed of in fields or municipal landfills....” My research and understanding are that only treated wastewater may be returned to surface water. Otherwise, at least in Texas, such wastewater must be disposed of in deep wells.

Dale Crane, M.B.A. ’74
Southlake, Texas

As a co-author of 93 scientific articles, I was disappointed by “Fracking’s Deadly Toll” in your July-August issue. Of particular concern is this statement:

“In each of the three major U. S. fracking regions they studied. . . the researchers found the risk of premature death was 3.5 percent higher for elderly people living downwind of fracking sites compared to the national average, and 2.2 percent higher for elderly people living upwind of fracking sites.”

What a shock! Thousands of innocent Americans sent to an early death by greedy oil barons! But wait—are those differences SIGNIFICANT? As every scientist knows—or should know—a “difference” in and of itself has no meaning. What one seeks is a “significant difference,” as denoted by such terms as “confidence limits” and “P-values.” And when it comes to P-vales, “.05” is OK, “.01” is good, and “.001” is preferred.

Before sending a wave of panic among Harvard readers and condemning an entire industry, authors of that article must show those differences are SIGNIFICANT. But that’s the easy part. Next we must ask WHY the elderly Americans who lived near fracking sites died at a slightly higher rate than the national average? Was it the process of fracking itself—or the geographic, atmospheric, socioeconomic and other factors that coincided with fracking and thus could have contributed to the extra mortality, even if fracking had not occurred? As my sainted grandpappy said, “Association ain’t the same as causation. The path to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

Dr. John Gamel, ‘66
Louisville, KY

“Fracking’s Deadly Toll” presented work by Harvard researchers that “found that the risk of premature death was 3.5 percent higher for elderly people living downwind of a fracking site compared to the national average.”

As a graduate of the Law School and an attorney practicing oil and gas law for more than 40 years in Texas, I read the article with great interest, only to find that “the researchers couldn’t determine the cause of death or the exact numbers of deaths from exposure to fracking.” Nor were they “able to determine the type of airborne pollutants that corresponded with premature death near fracking sites.” The article ultimately quoted a researcher as saying, “It’s uncertain whether radioactive particles produced during fracking are to blame for the higher risk of premature death.”

At the law school we were taught that proof of causation can only exist under the application of strict rules of evidence. I once represented Mitchell Energy Corporatoin when it was sued by a number of rural landowners claiming that their private water wells had been contaminated by hydrogen sulfide escaping from some of Mitchell’s nearby gas wells. Relying on verdicts by the jury, the trial court rendered a sizable judgment against Mitchell. But on appeal, the appellate court reversed and awarded judgment for Mitchell, holding that the plaintiffs had failed to offer any evidence that the water well contamination had been caused in fact by Mitchell, stating “mere guess or conjecture is not probative evidence.”

So, as the article itself reveals, the title is mere conjecture yet in search of proof.

Carter Burdette, J.D. ’58
Fort Worth

“Fracking’s Deadly Toll” (July-August, page 9) seems intent on inflaming those who are against fracking by using dramatic words like “deadly,” “terrible,” “radiation,” and “explosive charges.” The alarming verbiage seeks to imply that industry-wide characteristics like naturally occurring radioactive materials are unique to fracking and exaggerates the weak statistical conclusion of the research.

Not only are the results presented without discussing the margin of error, there is no control group, the absence of which renders the conclusion (blaming hydraulic fracturing) mere speculation. Specifically, what is the quantity of airborne pollutants and “risk of” premature death downwind and upwind of non-fracked wells? Perhaps the increased “risk” (however that is defined) arises in fact from living near any oil and gas well. How does one reach a conclusion regarding pollution while at the same time acknowledging an inability to identify those “deadly” airborne pollutants?

The article further contributes to the anti-fracking hysteria by quoting Professor Koutrakis as saying “wastewater…is disposed of in fields or stored in municipal landfill.” The professor certainly knows that frack fluid flowback is not disposed of in fields or municipal landfills but rather in disposal wells. To what “wastewater” he is referring is unclear, he has been misquoted, or perhaps he likes to call temporary holding ponds “disposal” sites (which they are not).

It is unfortunate that hydraulic fracturing, a remarkable technological achievement, is vilified by so many. In my experience, many of those vociferously against fracking have only the most rudimentary understanding of how the process works and often cannot even explain precisely the specific breakthrough which underpins fracking’s success nor (in support of their objections) the source of actual problems (like minor earthquakes).

Here’s a test of knowledge: what chemical is used in both fracking and ice cream and why?

Rome Arnold, M.B.A. ’83
Southampton, N.Y.

Editor’s note: The correspondent identified himself as an investment banker to the energy industry; we appreciate and encourage such disclosures.

The methodology and data used in the study, published in Nature Energy, may be found here: Li, L., Dominici, F., Blomberg, A.J. et al. Exposure to unconventional oil and gas development and all-cause mortality in Medicare beneficiaries. Nat Energy 7, 177–185 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-021-00970-y

Longxiang Li and Petros Koutrakis, the study’s authors, respond:

The purpose of our study is to evaluate the influence of unconventional wells on local residents, instead of vilifying the “fracking” practice. One of the biggest challenges of all related studies is to find historical pollution data, especially during the pre-drilling period, in rural areas where unconventional wells were intensively drilled. We innovatively used wind information to detect the directionality of the associated health effects, all-cause mortality in this case. To clarify, the “exposed” group consisted of beneficiaries living X kilometers downwind of unconventional wells and the “control” group consisted of beneficiaries living X kilometers upwind of the same wells. Wind direction is theoretically independent of socioeconomic factors that can likely confound the relationship. Technically, the only difference between the “exposed” and “control” groups is the position relative to known positions of these unconventional wells. The directionality of the health effects therefore shed light on the exposure pathway, which is hard to measure without an existing monitoring network.

The results, as well as the uncertainty estimation, were objectively presented in the publication. We did show the positive influence of unconventional wells in nearby communities after taking the economic influence into consideration. However, we consistently observed directionality of health effects in these communities, suggesting that air contaminants from wells played a role. We were not members of any anti-fracking organizations. Our task is to provide solid evidence for policymakers to make effective regulation. There are well-established cost-effective approaches to mitigate air pollution. We don’t believe a few steps to protect nearby residents from harmful air pollutants will hurdle companies to developing.

The commenter used the term “Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM)” to confuse the reader regarding the extent to which unconventional wells lifted the waste to ground surface. Actually, they were considered as “Technologically Enhanced Naturally-Occurring Radioactive Material (TENORM)” by USEPA. The volumes of drill cuttings and flowback water from an unconventional well are much greater than a conventional well. The radioactive elements in the flowback water, such as radium, can decay into radon and readily enter the atmosphere when the water was stored temporarily onsite. The aeronating practice, which is to speed up the decomposition of organic material, can accelerate the emanation of radon. The likely health influence of conventional wells cannot change the conclusion of our study. We didn’t investigate the health effects of these old wells due to a lack of the construction information. In addition, conventional wells only account for a small proportion of onshore production right now. Focusing on unconventional wells makes sense from a view of public health.

We may not be as knowledgeable as the commenter, an investor in the oil and gas industry for over 30 years. But we know the answer for his question. Stabilizer is used in both ice cream and fracking liquid, to slow down the separation of solid and liquid.

 

Daniel Oberhaus’s article gives reason for concern about elderly people living both downwind and upwind of fracking operations. His solution for the decreased life expectancies of these populations owing to fracking is to regulate the industry. He is particularly careful to underscore how valuable the oil and gas industries are: “Oil and gas production is a tremendous economic and industrial sector….”

Even beyond fracking’s lethality for groups of people living near fracking wells, its impact on global heating is tremendous. Methane emissions, greater in fracking than CO2 emissions, have “more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere,” according to the Environmental Defense Fund. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has called for halving CO2 and methane emissions by 2030 and reducing them to zero by 2050. Oberhaus’s conclusion is not only one of resignation to the gas and oil monoliths’ permanence, but of promotion. The magazine should be doing everything in its power to recruit writers who can show how the oil and gas industries are destroying life on the planet, and who can provide a guide to shutting them down for good.

Ellen Cantarow, Ph.D. ’71
New York City

Editor’s note: The language to which Cantarow refers is a quote from Petros Koutrakis, not an expression of opinion by the reporter. The magazine has covered University scholars’ research and policy work on climate change, energy, and sustainability extensively, throughout the past two decades, and will continue to do so. We do not take positions on those issues.

Sci Fi

The Geeky Underground (July-August, page 72), on Houghton Library’s science-fiction holdings, states, “Sci-fi fans were delighted when the genre jumped to the silver screen, notably in the 1960s with Star Trek….” The “silver screen” refers to movies in theaters. I presume the writer is talking about television (the “small screen”). Moreover, science-fiction television shows date to the late ’40s and early ’50s in the U.S., not the mid ’60s. Examples include Captain Video and His Video Rangers and Space Patrol (a personal favorite). If she indeed meant the silver screen, science-fiction movies date back at least to 1902, with A Trip to the Moon, based on Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon.

Scott G. Davis ’66, A.M. ’68
Tempe, Ariz.

Harvard’s collection of science fiction (described in “The Geeky Underground,” July-August, page 72) is not new. Some 60 years ago when I was an undergraduate, I learned that the Houghton Library was holding a sale of duplicates from its sci-fi holdings, and I rushed over to see what was being offered. For no more than $1 per volume (maybe less), I purchased first editions of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man and the three volumes of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. At the time, they were not yet “classics,” but their reputation and value have grown considerably since then. All of the books I bought at that sale are still in my library.

Richard Adler ’64
Cupertino, Calif.

Radcliffe’s Welcome

Thank you for featuring Wendy Lesser and her tenacity and creativity at The Threepenny Review in “A Woman of Letters” (July August, page 60). I must take issue with her description of early-1970s Radcliffe as exemplifying “the conventions of debutante life.” As a freshman in fall 1970, I was placed in her dorm, Eliot Hall. I came to Radcliffe having attended one of Boston’s public exam schools, Girls’ Latin School, and having been raised in a traditional immigrant family. The Eliot Hall “milk and cookies” Saturday-night gatherings are among my fondest memories of freshman year. Would that the Harvard houses then had given thought to welcoming first-generation college students.

Yolanda Kodrzycki ’74
Cambridge

Mystic Seaport

I was glad to read about Mystic Seaport, Connecticut (Seafaring America, July-August, page 8F), but surprised that no mention was made of the one-semester academic program on maritime history, policy, and science, and other aspects of maritime activity. A Williams College professor or other academic founded and has been in charge of this “Williams-Mystic” program since its inception about 50 years ago for two dozen students each semester from colleges all over the country. The students participate in field trips by boat to Maine and the Louisiana Gulf Coast. I visited them some years ago especially to check out its planetarium. (You need to find the North Star if your ship is lost at sea.)

Jay M. Pasachoff ’63, Ph.D. ’69
Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy
Williams College—Hopkins Observatory
Williamstown, Mass

Editor’s note: So noted. The article was a guide to casual visitors and tourists, and so did not intend to cover academic experiences there.

The (?) Irish

Early in Mark J. Plotkin’s excellent Vita on Richard Evans Schultes (July-August, page , 40), I was struck by what might seem an insignificant editorial oddity. In describing Schultes’s upbringing in early 20th century East Boston, Plotkin states he was “an outsider in a neighborhood dominated by Italians and the Irish” (italics added). As someone of predominantly Irish descent, I found this very selective construction striking, ironically in an article by and about members of a sub-specialty of ethnology. I will not presume to judge it, since we of Irish descent are accustomed to this sort of thing, other than to observe that, in this age of hyper-sensitivity to even the remote possibility of ethnic insult I tend to doubt that a similarly and selectively constructed reference to “the Japanese” or “the Africans” would have survived the Editor’s red pen.

Michael Hogan, M.B.A. ’88
Georges Mills, N.H.

Editors’ note: As an ear thing, were the phrase reversed, we would have rendered it “Irish and the Italians.” That feels natural and comfortable (try it without “the”), and it was on that basis that we proceeded—nothing more.

Dorm Crew

William Sherwood’s letter in the July-August issue (page 4) was the second time this year that I found someone bemoaning his need to clean other students’ toilets at Harvard. The first time was as I read Kent Garrett’s book, The Last Negroes at Harvard, in which he quoted one of my classmates, whom I shall not name. As for me, instead of shame, I felt gratitude that cleaning others’ toilets allowed me, having arrived in the U.S. as a penniless Hungarian refugee in December 1956, to attend the most prestigious University in the country. Yale accepted me as well and going there would have let me be closer to my family, but they offered a loan, whereas Harvard supplemented my scholarship with the opportunity to work and be free of monetary obligation later.

I cleaned the toilets of the rich (the future Aga Khan) and the poor (scholarship students like myself). I took pride in the quality of my work and as a result, I was eventually promoted to office work in the Buildings and Grounds Department. Later, as a medical student, I used my acquired skills to clean the toilet of our rented apartment, which exempted me from cooking duties—and my flatmates from having to eat my concoctions.

Derick Pasternak ’63, M.D. ’67
Seattle

Contra Merrick Garland…and Dobbs

I applaud U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s call “to defend democracy” (The Speeches 2022, July-August, page 21). He rightly highlights a number of ongoing threats. It’s therefore ironic that less than a month later his office released a statement condemning the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Dobbs is quintessentially pro-democracy. It returns the abortion issue to the people. This result contrasts sharply with Roe, which in 1973 imposed the will of seven unelected Justices on the rest of the country. An outcome less democratic can scarcely be imagined.

Our Constitution, of course, designates certain rights as fundamental, thereby largely insulating them from majority rule. Roe’s chief defect was to create a right to abortion out of whole cloth, with no credible constitutional justification. Prominent legal scholars—pro-choice on the public policy question of abortion—have recognized this fact. An early example is the late Professor John Hart Ely, who famously described Roe as “a very bad decision…because it is bad constitutional law, or rather because it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.”

Removing federal constitutional protection of abortion will affect society in significant ways. Some citizens will vigorously decry the changes to come, whereas others will applaud. Both sides will seek laws implementing their conflicting views. This is precisely what should happen in a democracy—political activity untrammeled by fabricated constitutional constraints. Attorney General Garland regrettably ignores this fact in the context of abortion.

Samuel W. Calhoun ’71
Lexington, Va.

We, fellows and staff who take pride in the time we spent at the Bunting Institute, feel shame at Harvard’s and the Radcliffe Institute’s silence in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to dismantle 50 years of constitutionally grounded equal protection for women.

Women in 26 states no longer have the right to choose whether to become mothers, while men retain the right to evade fatherhood—any man continues free to abandon a pregnancy he helped start. We focus on equality knowing the decision also evokes our nation’s history of involuntary servitude and knowing pregnancy is a medical risk for millions and a mortal danger for too many.

Academic institutions everywhere have taken a visible public stand: Presidents at the University of California system, the University of Michigan and the Seven Sister Colleges were among the first. Catholic higher education has revealed it is not a monolith. University presidents and academic deans have spoken internally to campus communities, with messages of concern and compassion for their members now scared and suffering. Harvard’s and Radcliffe’s leaders remain silent.

Harvard’s own history embodies the challenges that have long confronted women in our quest for equal rights and equal access to the privileges and benefits of this society. There is no need to spell out the details of the cripplingly slow evolution from Radcliffe Annex via shared classes to Harvard degrees.

July is well advanced as we write so it is far too late to urge President Bacow and Dean Brown-Nagin to speak up quickly. It is never too late, however, to take a stand. We urge both a strong media presence and an intimate and practical assessment of the many different ways Harvard can put its breathtaking resources to work to ease women's suffering to come while reasserting women’s right to equality in the United States today.

Laura Korobkin, Bunting Institute Fellow, 1994-5
Priscilla J. Benson BI Fellow 1994-95
Lillian Hsu
Carrie M. Weems
Margaret R. Higonnet, BI Fellow 1995-96
Bernadette J. Brooten, Ph.D., Dr. Theol. h.c. (Bern)
Catherine Z. Elgin, Professor of the Philosophy of Education
Diane Joseph-McCarthy
Leslie Brody
A.J. Verdelle, BI Fellow 1996-97
Karen Wyche, BI Fellow 1994-95
Maria Campos-Pons Vanderbilt University
Nancy Salzer, BI Fellow 1988-89
Denise Freed, BI Fellow 1994-1996
Sandra Steingraber, BI Fellow ’93-’94
Margaret T Fuller BI Fellow 1994-95
Catherine L. Craig
Kim Sichel, Professor, History of Art & Architecture, Boston University
Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow, Mary Ingraham Bunting (now Radcliffe Institute) Fellow, 1994-95
Laura Harrington
Renny Harrigan Staff
Abby Zanger
Stephanie Singer “Senior Fellow, Hatfield School of Government, Portland State University.”|
Gretchen Elmendorf Staff
Sophie Cabot Black
Alison Hickey
Karol Bennet Bunting Fellow 1993-94
Helena Meyer-Knapp Bunting Institute Fellow 1994-95
Paula Gutlove Bunting Institute 1994-95
Adrian LeBlanc, BI Fellow 1994-95

Errata

Rachel Hadas ’69 was inadvertently assigned to the class of 1970 in “A Woman of Letters” (July-August, page 60).

An editor’s note on page 4 of the issue referred to a prior Undergraduate column as “most-real”; we meant “most-read.” And in 7 Ware Street, the reference to “standardized texts” was meant to say “standardized tests.”

Thomas J. Messenger, of Moab, Utah, corrected the caption for the photo of two rivers converging that accompanied the article about Stephen Strom’s desert landscapes (Montage, July-August, page 51). They are the Green (not San Juan) and Colorado rivers.

And Grinnell College trustee Jeanne Myerson, MCRP ’78, points out that that institution eliminated loans from student financial aid in the fall of 2021, thus preceding Williams College (Brevia, July-August, page 27).

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