Search
A Bouquet for Nature-Lovers
The Rarest of the Rare: Stories behind the Treasures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History (HarperResource, $22.95) is a delightful armchair tour through the packed museum with an agreeable guide, staff writer Nancy Pick, who points out scores of …
Issue: November-December 2004
Grade Deflation
Jawboning works. That's the import of a letter to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) from Benedict H. Gross, dean of undergraduate education. He reports that even before FAS-enacted changes in College grading and the awarding of academic honors take …
Issue: May-June 2003
A Democracy of Opportunity
Franklin D. Roosevelt, A.B. 1904, LL.D. ’29, opened his 1936 campaign for a second term as president by pressing to rebuild the United States as “a democracy of opportunity.” At the Democratic National Convention, FDR decried the way the nation’s …
Issue: January-February 2022
Time to Electrify
The recent spike in oil prices , to more than $100 per barrel—and the resulting, predictable outcry over the return of the $4 gallon of gas—have prompted hurried responses from policymakers in Washington, eager to do something about constituents’ economic …
Issue: July-August 2011
Teaching and Learning Abroad
Mollie wright ’09 expected to spend her summer in Costa Rica teaching English. She was, after all, a volunteer for WorldTeach, a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization affiliated with the Harvard Center for International Development that places volunteer …
Issue: January-February 2008
Off the Shelf
Without Precedent: Chief Justice John Marshall and His Times , by Joel Richard Paul, J.D. ’81 (Riverhead, $30), offers an accessible portrait of a giant from the third branch of government. The author, of the University of California Hastings Law School, …
Issue: March-April 2018
A Mind of One’s Own
In a small New England town, sitting at a plain wooden table, 17 3/8ths inches square, Emily Dickinson created nearly 1,800 poems that continue to entrance and mystify readers across the globe. That table will again be on display at Harvard’s Houghton …
Issue: March-April 2020
Jill Abramson to Teach at Harvard
Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson ’76 will come to Harvard as a visiting lecturer for the 2014-2015 academic year, teaching undergraduate courses on narrative nonfiction in the Department of English. “I'm honored and excited to be …
Dramatis Personae
Brenda Baker ’69, Ph.D. ’73…longtime scientific researcher at Bell Labs Ben Barker ’69, Ph.D. ’75…retired after 26 years at Bolt Beranek & Newman (BBN), where he was senior vice president, and five years as president of Data Race William Bossert ’59, …
Issue: September-October 2020
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 …
How Does Hate Spread?
In the months following Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel and Israel’s military response in Gaza, American Jews and Muslims have endured a rise in hatred. In the two months after October 7, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported a 337 percent increase …
The Forty-Year Fight
“I thought every college had an ethnic-studies program,” says Itzel Vasquez-Rodriguez ’17. She dreamed of pursuing Chicano studies in college, and says she was “shocked to learn that Harvard not only doesn’t have Chicano studies, they don’t even have an …
“Ukraine Today, Taiwan Tomorrow?”
As Russia continues its war in Ukraine, many have wondered about the potential consequences for Taiwan. Could China be emboldened by Russia’s aggression, or would the costly military stalemate and strong Western response discourage a reining in of Taiwan? …
Winter Sports
The icewomen (30-3-1 overall, 15-0-1 ECAC) skated one of their best teams ever, and were ranked first in the nation for most of the year. They won the Ivy and regular-season ECAC titles, plus the Beanpot tournament. Two losses stung. In the ECAC …
Issue: May-June 2003
Toward Theater
If the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) approves an undergraduate concentration in “theater, dance, and media,” as expected later this semester, it will begin to fulfill a vision first outlined more than six years ago—or, depending on the historical …