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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 …
Mike Schur on the Good Life
Mike Schur ’97 just loves philosophy. He favors Aristotle, but will also turn to utilitarianism, Kant, ubuntu, and existentialism. “I take a jambalaya approach,” he says. “I don’t know why anyone would decline any school of thought if it has something …
Issue: March-April 2022
Retooling Tech Transfer
When physicist Eric Mazur’s research group created a new material called black silicon one day in 1998, he knew right away they were on to something. The material absorbs 50 percent more visible light than regular silicon, making possible uses easy to …
Issue: January-February 2008
A Calming Presence
The moment was easy to miss. Halfway through the third period in an early January game that Harvard would soon put out of reach, Colgate defenseman Nicole Gass skated into the zone and, from the top of the right-hand faceoff circle, snapped a hard shot …
Issue: March-April 2016
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 …
Historic Threads
By the time the talented and shrewd Samuel Slater arrived in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1790, the race to mechanize was on. Groups of carpenters and mechanics, funded by businessmen, were urgently trying to move beyond hand- and animal-power —to catch up …
Issue: May-June 2020
Rebooting Online Education
Editor’s note: This article was reported before students left campus and the University pivoted to remote teaching , effective with the end of spring recess on March 23 ( a huge effort highlighted by President Lawrence S. Bacow: see his letter , here). …
Issue: May-June 2020
Off the Shelf
Prayer: A History, by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, Ph.D. ’84 (Houghton Mifflin, $29.95). He is a senior editor at Parabola, she is a professor of religion at Smith, and this is an epic—well written, packed with interesting information, often …
Issue: March-April 2006
Jimmy Vesey Looks Back
More than anything else , he will miss his teammates, the guys he’s shared a rink and a bus and a bunk with for four years—and the coaches and trainers and everybody else behind the bench and on the ice (and piloting the Zamboni) at Bright-Landry Hockey …
How to Reform Healthcare
Imagine facing an infection that no medicine can cure. Or finally being diagnosed with a disease that explains all your symptoms—but at a stage too late to treat. How can the practice of medicine change to address challenges like these? More than 100 …
“Social Justice in Linguistics”
Kathryn davidson’s role in bringing an ASL class to Harvard, on one level, was incidental. The students calling for the class needed a faculty member’s signature, and an ASL researcher happened to arrive at the right moment. On another level, it mirrors …
Issue: May-June 2017
Developing Data Science
Harvard plans to build a data-science institute in Allston to support research, education, and entrepreneurship in what University leaders call “a new discipline.” Data science is central to research in public health, the physical, social, and biological …
Issue: May-June 2017
Beyond the SAT
Nicholas Lemann ’76, dean of the Columbia Journalism School from 2003 to 2013 ( “The Press Professor,” September-October 2005, page 78), has, among other works, written the definitive history of standardized testing, T he Big Test: The Secret History of …
Issue: September-October 2024
Lessons from Libya?
In the spring of 2007, this magazine published a brief news item observing that "Lawrence University Professor Michael Porter, perhaps the world's preeminent corporate strategist, is advising the government of Libya on economic reform." It went on to say …
Off the Shelf
The Rise and Fall of American Growth, by Robert J. Gordon ’62 (Princeton, $39.95). In a huge study of the U.S. standard of living since the Civil War, the Northwestern University economist, a leading scholar of productivity and growth, emerges with a very …
Issue: January-February 2016