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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 …
Harvard Public Health Dean Julio Frenk to Depart
Julio Frenk , who became dean of the Harvard School of Public Health (as it was then known) in January 2009 , has been appointed president of the University of Miami (UM), succeeding Donna Shalala, who announced her plan to retire last September . UM made …
More Housing in Allston
At a public meeting on November 30, representatives from developer Samuels & Associates and Elkus Manfredi Architects presented revised plans for a 274-unit residential apartment building at 180 Western Avenue in Allston. The site lies at the intersection …
Not-So-Free Parking
It’s an all-too-familiar nightmare. After a smooth drive on a freeway, you pull into the city to run an errand, grab lunch, or drop your child off at school. But all the curb spots are taken, and the garage costs $25 an hour. So, you circle the block, …
Complicated Relationship
Freshman women officially joined their male counterparts in Harvard Yard's dormitories in 1972. But 25 years later, when Harvard College dedicated a new gate into the Old Yard to celebrate that event, many assumed the anniversary hoopla commemorated the …
Issue: May-June 2004
When to Arrest Protesters
On the evening of April 30, 2024, the New York Police Department arrested 112 people in and around Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall after pro-Palestine protesters occupied the building. In Cambridge, McCormack professor of citizenship and …
Michelle Yeoh’s Three Tips for Success
Against the backdrop of Harvard Law School’s (HLS) Langdell Hall—where the HLS class of 2023 spent countless hours studying—Academy Award-winning actress and Class Day speaker Michelle Yeoh shared a guide to “jumping into voids.” Most know Yeoh from her …
Coastal Banks Shed Risky Mortgages—Putting the Financial System at Risk
Warming oceans—and the storms and rising sea levels they bring—will have their most severe impact on the southeastern shoreline of the United States, from the Texas Gulf Coast up to the Carolina Outer Banks. Mortgage lenders in the area have taken note. …
Getting General Education Right?
Following a review committee’s sharp criticisms of the undergraduate General Education curriculum (Gen Ed) published last spring, its chair, Martignetti professor of philosophy Sean Kelly, on December 1 briefed the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) on …
Other Financial Updates
Harvard’s friends remained supportive during the fiscal year ended last June 30. Vice president for alumni affairs and development Tamara Elliott Rogers announced in September that donors had given $596 million, just $6 million shy of the fiscal 2009 …
Issue: November-December 2010
The DNA of World Literature
Rainer Maria Rilke’s 1908 poem “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” written in German, is notoriously difficult to translate. The poem, about a fragmentary statue of Apollo, is dense with enigmatic metaphors: the speaker describes the (imagined) eyes as ripening …
A Broadcast Cornucopia
There may not be another radio station in America that would air a show like the one WHRB (95.3 FM) broadcast in February of 2013: an hour and a half of music with no song longer than one minute. “It was the most stressful 90 minutes of my life,” says …
Issue: September-October 2015
Fixing the COVID-19 Swab Supply Chain
In the United States and globally, the inability to test large numbers of people for COVID-19 has severely hampered diagnosis by clinicians and the data-gathering and modeling efforts of epidemiologists. But the shortage does not involve testing capacity, …
Off the Shelf
For some serious beach reading: Maile Meloy ’94 returns to writing fiction for adults with Do Not Become Alarmed (Riverhead Books, $27.00). Rapid and absorbing, if sometimes schematic, it follows a family cruise vacation gone wrong, and charts the waters …
Issue: July-August 2017
The Blue Garden
In the Gilded Age, Newport, Rhode Island, became the summer playground of the American upper class. Vanderbilts and Astors built mansions (“cottages”) along Bellevue Avenue, each trying to outshine the others in magnificence. Yet, flying in the face of …
Issue: July-August 2022