Research & Ideas

Discover Harvard research, scholarship, and ideas shaping the world—from science and technology to policy, education, and the humanities.

A man in a suit waves while smiling, with greenery in the background.

Remembering Jack Reardon

He was Harvard’s quintessential people person.

by Jonathan Shaw

Rosa Estrella Ortega Roa has big plans for the unit where she lives with her two-year-old grandson. Although the walls and ceiling of her kitchen are still unfinished... [click the images below for more]

For Santiago's Poor, Housing with Dignity

An innovative housing initiative with deep Harvard ties lets families in Chile who once lived illegally become homeowners.

Counterterrorism and Democracy

The most effective ways to fight terrorism do not involve important tradeoffs between security and democratic principles.

Itinerant Scholar

The interests of Berkman Center fellow Lewis Hyde include Thoreau; writing poetry; and intellectual property in the digital age—and he manages to draw connections between them.

The slave trade shipped Africans to the Americas, the Middle East, and Asia; where victims ended up depended in part on which trade route their captors used. In total, the four routes ferried nearly 20 million people out of Africa.

Slavery’s Sway

Interdisciplinary economist Nathan Nunn explores the problem of African underdevelopment by drawing on—and unearthing—historical data about slavery.

by Paul Gleason

June 20, 2008, 9 a.m.: Looking toward the nearly-completed CCTV tower in Beijing's Central Business District

A Window on Beijing

The Olympics focused global attention generally on air pollution in China, and particularly on air quality in Beijing.

Shanghai Central

Harvard on July 1 opened the newest in an expanding network of international offices, in Shanghai, and is scheduled to launch another in Beijing...

How to Reduce Air Pollution in China

Market-based policies for air-pollution control

by Mun S. Ho

Eye on Iran and Israel

"This autumn may be Israel's last and best chance to go after Iran's nuclear capability," Feldman wrote in the New York Times Magazine recently...

Tools of Stasi spying: jars containing dust cloths used to capture the body scent of people the Stasi was trying to track; a deer statuette with a camera hidden inside; a Swiss-made Tessina 35-mm miniature camera.

The Seductions of Snooping

Historian of science Kristie Macrakis's book on spying techniques used by communist East Germany's secret police.

by Elizabeth Gudrais

Maxim Gorky

Brief life of a great enigma, the Russian author and political propagandist born Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov: 1868-1936...

by Donald Fanger