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Early-Retirement Program and Other Cost-Cutting Measures
The University on February 10 unveiled a voluntary early-retirement program for qualifying staff members. In a broadcast e-mail, Marilyn Hausammann, vice president for human resources, noted that "staff members who are age 55 and over, have 10 or more …
Allston Land Company Leads Harvard Commercial Development
The University today unveiled a nascent Allston land company (ALC), a wholly owned subsidiary with a new structure and leadership—notably, former Massachusetts Port Authority chief executive Thomas P. Glynn, who will be CEO—focused on Harvard’s plans for …
Jens Meierhenrich
A very long bookshelf in Jens Meierhenrich’s Harvard office holds a complete transcript of the Nuremberg trial of major war criminals, in 42 volumes. “I had to break the bank to buy them,” he says. But these are essential references for the German-born, …
Issue: July-August 2006
Engineering an Internal Clock
Non-scientists generally think of “circadian clock” as a metaphoric term. There’s nothing literally ticking away inside the human body, helping align it to the regular cycle of day and night. But synthetic biologists from Harvard Medical School (HMS) and …
Dutch Discipline, American Grit
Harvard hadn’t beaten Princeton in 22 years. But last October, in Tjerk van Herwaarden’s fifth season as the Crimson field-hockey coach, his team had a chance to break the curse. The Crimson traveled to Princeton on a six-game winning streak, with a 4-0 …
Issue: September-October 2017
The College within the University
D. Ronald Daniel : There’s a very special governance issue at Harvard. That is the role of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences [FAS] in the whole University. Henry obviously can speak to this, but there was a time in Neil’s era, for example—and Neil had …
Issue: May-June 2006
Military Recruiting Upheld
The Supreme Court ruled on March 6 that the federal government can cut off funding to universities that limit or ban military recruiting on their campuses. The 8-0 opinion (Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. did not participate) upheld the Solomon …
Issue: May-June 2006
Fixing Foreign Policy
This essay is adapted from the 2005-2006 Maurine and Robert Rothschild Lecture, delivered on April 24 under the sponsorship of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Can American foreign policy be fixed? Whether the alarms are caused by our …
Issue: July-August 2006
Harvard Overhauls Disciplinary Procedures
Harvard announced this morning that it was overhauling disciplinary procedures involving violations of the University-wide Statement on Rights and Responsibilities—suggesting a recognition that the ways in which discipline was administered by each …
The Ethanol Illusion
Americans annual consumption of gasoline (for both private and commercial transportation) amounts to more than 140 billion gallonsclose to 500 gallons for every man, woman, and child in the country. With gasoline prices up by almost a third over the past …
Issue: November-December 2006
Can Memory Be Related to Creative Cognition?
Fuhgeddaboudit! Or maybe (and as many of us prefer) don’t. As it turns out, “episodic memory”—the ability to relive specific moments from past experiences—may be related to a person’s creative capacity. “Memory is not just for going back into the past …
A Shift in the Created Order
Adapted by the author from the Convocation Address she delivered to the Divinity School community on September 19, 2005, at the opening of the academic year, half a century after the first female students matriculated there. The admission of women to …
Issue: May-June 2006
What Legacy?
Sometime in 2019, U.S. District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs will rule on whether Harvard College impermissibly discriminates against Asian-American applicants, the claim brought by Students for Fair Admissions. Her ruling, if ultimately appealed to …
Issue: January-February 2019
A Treasure Way Up High
The ceiling of Sanders Theatre soars so high, it makes you look up, says Raymond Traietti, assistant director of Memorial Hall. That’s when the grandest antique chandelier in all of Boston—a 1,040-pound, glowing dewdrop of nineteenth-century iron and …
Issue: January-February 2016
On the Front Lines of the Coronavirus Emergency
When he’s not practicing wilderness medicine—caring for climbers with altitude sickness in the Himalayas or victims of the tsunami disaster in Japan— Stuart Harris is a physician in Massachusetts General Hospital’s (MGH) emergency department. That means …