We are proud to recognize four contributors to Harvard Magazine for their superb work on your behalf during 2023, and to confer on each a $1,000 honorarium.
Gurney professor of English literature and professor of comparative literature James Engell has been sounding the alarm about the declining humanities—within the academy and in society at large—for decades. His January-February Forum essay, “Humanists All” (page 34), is a penetrating, comprehensive exploration of what is at stake—fully worthy of the Smith-Weld Prize (in memory of A. Calvert Smith, A.B. 1914, a former secretary to the Governing Boards and executive assistant to President James Bryant Conant, and of Philip S. Weld ’36, a former president of the magazine), which honors thought-provoking writing about Harvard and higher education.
Contributing editor Dick Friedman ’73, a Sports Illustrated veteran (and 2015 Smith-Weld honorand), continues to contribute astute and frequently funny weekly dispatches during the football season. He did the Crimson’s sesquicentennial season up right with his roundups in these pages and in November-December, in “Harvard’s G.O.A.T.” (page 36), on Charlie Brickley—accompanied by an All-Crimson Team constructed with fellow football addicts Joseph Bertagna ’73, John T. Bethell ’54, and John Powers ’70. It’s a treat to celebrate Friedman’s obsession with the McCord Writing Prize (honoring the legendary prose and verse that David T.W. McCord, A.B. 1921, A.M. ’22, L.H.D. ’56, composed for these pages and for the Harvard College Fund). And to do a little something for his sidekicks, too.
Illustrator Sam Falconer performed the conceptually difficult, artistically vivid feat of bringing to life emerging discoveries about the human microbiome, diet, and indeed the meaning of our species: a completely successful, memorable complement to the November-December cover story, “You Are What (Your Microbes) Eat” (page 30), on the research of Rachel Carmody, associate professor of human evolutionary biology.
Long-time contributing editor Jim Harrison, a repeat honorand for memorable portraiture and other photography, outdid himself this year, with the haunting portraits accompanying the January-February cover feature, “To the Rescue” (page 25), on Harvard’s Scholars at Risk Program, among other assignments, and the technically difficult, perfect images accompanying “The Lazarus Forest” (Treasure, May-June, page 72), on the Harvard Forest’s amazing dioramas.
With our warmest thanks and congratulations,
—The Editors
