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News Briefs
College Admissions Challenges In late june , the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the limited use of race in admissions decisions, ruling in its second pass at Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin that properly constrained processes for reviewing applicants …
Issue: September-October 2016
Home Sweeter Home
Don’t curb your enthusiasm: Spring is the ideal time to maximize your home’s value, whether by sprucing up your surroundings with a small renovation or leveraging equity for bigger changes. Real-estate, organization, and mortgage experts in and around …
Issue: March-April 2020
Lepore and Longfellow
In "How Longfellow Woke the Dead," Kemper professor of American History Jill Lepore (who also chairs the history and literature program) offers a serious reading of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride," rescuing it from the status of …
Video: An Operatic Honorary Degree
At the Morning Exercises , Harvard President Drew Faust conferred an honorary degree on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg , L ’59. Fellow honorand Plácido Domingo sang the end of the conferral to her. View a video here: …
Ice Cream and Vinegar
Seventeen authors, several of them Harvardians, reread a book or a poem (or the Sgt. Pepper lyrics) that impressed them in their youths and write about how it—of course, they—have changed. Rereadings (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $20) is edited by …
Issue: September-October 2005
Why the Internet of Things Is Big Business
For those outside Silicon Valley , the “Internet of Things” is a buzzword often associated with seemingly superfluous toys for early-adopting consumers: the expensive Apple watch, the oft-ridiculed Google Glass, or a “smart” refrigerator that senses when …
Issue: July-August 2015
Making Allston Housing (More) Affordable
A January 22 public hearing to discuss the construction of affordable homes at a Harvard-donated site between Seattle and Windom streets in Allston opened with stark numbers. “There are about 9,144 total housing units in Allston” began Roxanna Zahedi of …
Bringing Minds and Money to Bear on Teaching
Six days before the public launch of The Harvard Campaign, in which the University will “foreground” pedagogy and learning , according to President Drew Faust, two news announcements underscored the scope of that initiative: Provost Alan M. Garber …
Faculty, Family, Diversity
In her first annual report, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ (FAS) senior advisor to the dean on diversity issues has highlighted recent results in recruiting female faculty members, and some of the real obstacles to effecting change in the composition …
Issue: January-February 2007
Harvard Engineering and Applied Sciences Receives $400-Million Endowment Gift
John A. Paulson, M.B.A. ’80, has given a $400-million endowment gift to Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS)—the largest in University history, and the second enormous endowment gift, which bears naming rights, to a Harvard school …
“The Work of the Public Health Leader Is the Work of the Herdsman”
Long before starting his current role at the World Bank, which now includes helping coordinate the organization’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, Doctor Muhammad Ali Pate grew up one of 10 children in a family of herdsmen in Nigeria—what “might seem …
International Investments
Harvard’s global ambitions to study and know more about the world, and to send more students out into it, were triply boosted at the end of the spring term with the creation of a new post—vice provost for international affairs—and the …
Issue: July-August 2006
Seafaring America
“There are people who come to Mystic just so they can get stuck in traffic at the drawbridge,” says historian Nancy Steenburg ’72, a resident of the picturesque Connecticut town since 1980. The captivating bascule bridge that connects to the village …
Issue: July-August 2022
A Call for Precision
On January 21 , 2017, millions of people gathered across the country for the Women’s March—at that point, the largest single-day protest in American history. Amid disputes about the number of participants, Jeremy Pressman, a professor at the University of …
On My Honor
Harvard undergraduates now have an honor code—spelling out expectations of integrity in their academic work, as legislated by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) last spring. This fall, they will have to “affirm their awareness ” (emphasis added) of …
Issue: May-June 2015