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Rebelling and Expelling
By most standards, 2020 wasn’t a great year to graduate: as a pandemic worsened, seniors left professors and friends behind and dealt with a graduation ceremony held online. At least they got degrees. Shortly before the graduation of the class of 1823, 43 …
Issue: September-October 2020
How Birds Lost Flight
How did emus , ostriches, and kiwis end up flightless? What chain of events resulted in these birds diverging from the species that soar through the air and moving to a wholly terrestrial, and very successful, existence? For a long time, scientists …
Issue: March-April 2024
Cooper Gallery Lights Up Mount Auburn Street
The Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art glows at night—a lantern of lit cedar against the dense red brick of Mount Auburn Street. Visitors get their first look into the building through slices of glass, between tall cedar slats. The …
In Africa, Food vs. Climate?
Though scientists have long known that Africa is a major contributor to rising levels of atmospheric methane, the primary culprit has been a mystery: emissions from the typical sources, such as wetlands and landfills, couldn’t account for the total …
Issue: January-February 2025
Forum: Is Harvard Complacent?
Consider this irony: Harvard and other elite American research universities, so crucial to innovation in almost every area of our lives, find it almost impossible to innovate within their own operations and embedded assumptions. They regularly transform …
Issue: September-October 2021
HAA Honors Alumni Clubs and SIGs
The honors, awarded at the Harvard Alumni Association’s winter meeting in February, celebrate both alumni and shared interest groups (SIGs) that have organized exceptional programs. Established in 2015 to “create a strong, connected, collaborative …
Issue: March-April 2018
Pandemic in the Workplace
As U.S. states and economies worldwide take tentative steps toward reopening, a pertinent study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health suggests that workplace transmission of the coronavirus accounted for 48 percent of the initial outbreaks in …
Erin McDermott Announced as Harvard’s First Woman Athletic Director
Faculty of Arts and Sciences dean Claudine Gay announced this afternoon that Erin McDermott will become the University’s new Nichols Family Athletic Director, the first woman to fill the role in Harvard history. McDermott will begin at Harvard on July 1, …
The Immunity Engineer
One story David Mooney tells starts with a slug. “This slug does a really good job of creating a mucus that allows it to stick really tightly, so predators can’t just peel it off and eat it,” he says. The mucus, a marvelous material, turns out to consist …
Issue: January-February 2025
“Attacking the Concept of Debt”
Only a few years ago, Douglas Jones, who worked night shifts as a security guard at a nursing home in Roxbury, was hesitant to spend even $10 more than his typical budget allowed. Payments on his student loan debt were being withdrawn directly from his …
Sunil Amrith, Kate Orff, and Damon Rich Awarded MacArthur Grants
Sunil Amrith , Mehra Family professor of South Asian studies and professor of history, has been awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship (better known as the “genius grant”), a no-strings-attached award of $625,000 paid out over five years. The …
Updike's Literary Archive: Sneak Preview
Harvard's Houghton Library has purchased the papers of the late author John Updike '54, Litt.D. ’92 (as previously reported), and the New York Times recently published several pieces germane to Updike and his archive. Although the materials, which now …
New Bedford
People know about New Bedford’s thriving fishing industry, its history as a whaling hub, and its role in inspiring Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Evidence of that maritime history abounds, especially in the robust permanent displays of art and artifacts at …
Issue: July-August 2021
Slightly Supernatural
It wasn’t until after she moved into the haunted house that Laura van den Berg’s latest novel really started coming together. The Third Hotel follows Clare, a young widow who takes a trip to Havana in the wake of her husband’s sudden death and then begins …
Issue: September-October 2018
A Letter to Our Readers
Dear Readers, This morning—after undergraduates who were able to leave departed campus by the College’s Sunday, 5:00 p.m. target—Harvard faculties and the administration began piloting remote work, away from campus, for as many employees as possible. …
John S. Rosenberg , Irina Kuksin