Search
News in Brief
A Deluge of Deans Several significant leadership appointments were announced toward the end of the spring semester. Jeremy M. Weinstein, Ph.D. ’03, professor of international studies at Stanford, his academic home for two decades, will become Harvard …
Issue: July-August 2024
Investigating Harvard’s E-mail Investigations
(Updated 7.23.13: Read an assessment of the report detailing Harvard’s e-mail investigations here.) During the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) meeting last April 2 —at which dean Michael D. Smith and President Drew Faust revealed that further …
A Yodel for Help in the Modern World
In 1971, when Howard Stein was professor of playwriting at the Yale School of Drama, the program accepted a young playwright, Christopher Durang ’71. Stein burst into the office of Robert Brustein, the school’s dean, with the news. “We took in a kid from …
Issue: March-April 2009
When Technology and Society Clash
In early 2016, as Donald Trump’s presidential campaign emerged from the Republican pack and Hillary Clinton battled Bernie Sanders through a long Democratic primary season, computer scientist Latanya Sweeney launched a new research project. For more than …
Issue: November-December 2024
A Shakespearean Romance
Although I entered Harvard’s graduate program in English in 1974 believing I’d focus my attention on Romantic poetry, I soon gravitated to Widener X, the oddly signified office of Cabot professor of English literature G. Blakemore Evans in the main …
Cambridge 02138
The techniques and machinery described by Harbour Fraser Hodder in "Bloodless Revolution" (November-December 2000, page 36) will revolutionize many current surgical procedures, and in the near future we will have gentler and safer methods of dealing with …
Cambridge 02138
Understanding Addictions While I was pleased to see Harvard Magazine address this vast and critical issue (“Deep Cravings,” by Craig Lambert, March-April, page 60), I was disturbed by the article’s potentially misleading tone. It is interesting to some …
Deep Cravings
The bombshell dropped in 1976, when "The Natural History of Chipping" appeared in the American Journal of Psychiatry. In their article, Norman Zinberg, then clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard, and his research assistant R.C. Jacobson described …
Parks for Tomorrow
In 2009 , Bas Smets walked across an old industrial plaza in Arles, France. Entirely concrete, the space posed a problem. The area was being transformed into a large art complex, but in the intense summer sun, the ground reflected the heat, doubly baking …
Issue: July-August 2024
The Financial Fallout
In the fall of 2008, as banks and markets collapsed, Harvard discovered enormous problems in its own financial structure and operations. By year’s end, under duress, the University had to borrow $2.5 billion at high interest rates to maintain liquidity …
News in Brief
President Alan M. Garber After a dozen years as provost, and seven months as interim president (he was appointed January 2), Alan M. Garber became Harvard’s thirty-first president on August 2, when the governing boards announced their decision. The …
Issue: September-October 2024
The End of the Ivy League?
With one minute left in Harvard’s last men’s basketball game of the 2023-2024 season, sophomore Chisom Okpara drove toward the basket, leaped, and released the ball. It clanked off the rim back into his hands. On the second attempt, he made the shot, his …
Issue: November-December 2024
Football 2023: Harvard 34-Brown 31
On Friday night at Harvard Stadium, nearly 16,000 spectators witnessed a real rock-and-roller between Harvard and Brown. The game featured big plays, spectacular catches, a stirring goal-line stand and a cerebral move to clinch the outcome. When it was …
Active Grandparenting, Costly Repair
Editors’ note: Love it or hate it, exercise is a vital component of health. Harvard Magazine has explored exercise from its epidemiological impacts and its basic biology at the level of mitochondria , to its potent anti-inflammatory effects . Several …
Issue: September-October 2020
Harvard Announces Salary, Hiring Freezes and Other Spending Cuts
Breaking News: In a message headlined “Economic Impact of COVID-19,” President Lawrence S. Bacow—joined by Provost Alan M. Garber and Executive Vice President Katie Lapp—just notified the community that “we need to take some actions immediately to align …