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Wisdom of the Sages
The spring of 1933 was a trying time: the depths of the Depression, a new president scrambling to reverse systemic disasters and lift shattered spirits. Sound familiar? During that Commencement week, the Phi Beta Kappa Orator was Connecticut governor …
Issue: May-June 2021
Kennedy School’s Campus Makeover
The Harvard Kennedy School ’s (HKS) light and airy new campus, unveiled at a ribbon-cutting ceremony this morning, looks like an intentional antithesis to its older, stuffy buildings. As architect Graham Wyatt put it, “When we came to your campus, we …
General Education under the Microscope
General education —the flagship program in the College’s curriculum, consisting of courses from eight categories designed to assure that undergraduates acquire some breadth of intellectual exposure, as well as some grounding in ethical reasoning and the …
Priscilla Chan Grants $12 Million for Public Service
When last seen on campus, during her tenth reunion, pediatrician Priscilla Chan ’07, poncho-clad, was applauding her husband, Mark Zuckerberg ’06, LL.D.’17 , Facebook’s co-founder and CEO, as he finally got his Harvard degree and delivered the address at …
Harvard Doctoral Programs Highly Ranked
The National Research Council’s (NRC) Assessment of Research Doctorate Programs , released today, gave “exceptionally strong evaluations” to Harvard’s offerings, according to a statement released by Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) dean Allan …
New Masters Appointed for Cabot, Eliot, and Mather Houses
Harvard College dean Evelynn Hammonds today announced the appointment of new masters and co-masters for Cabot, Eliot, and Mather Houses, respectively: Rakesh Khurana, a Harvard Business School professor, and Stephanie Khurana Douglas Melton , a Faculty …
Inside Harvard’s Taylor Swift Class
If Loker professor of English Stephanie Burt had her way, record stores would sell copies of Alexander Pope’s 1735 poem “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot” with a snake—the symbol of Taylor Swift’s album Reputation— embossed on the cover. Swift released Reputation …
Synthetic Biology’s New Menagerie
In the summer of 2009, a team of Cambridge University undergraduates built seven strains of the bacterium Escherichia coli , one in each color of the rainbow. Red and orange carotenoid pigments were produced by inserting genes from plant pathogen Pantoea …
Issue: September-October 2014
Radio Wits
You’re at a dinner party with exceptionally witty guests, well versed on current events. Lots of laughs: the wisecracking atmosphere’s slightly competitive, though it hums with conviviality. After a bit, someone famous drops by for some banter and …
Issue: January-February 2010
Resolve
I have responded to many outpourings of disappointment and anger during my time in higher education, but the reaction to the events of January 6 was exceptional. Spurred by an attack on the legitimacy of our electoral process and a disgraceful act of …
Issue: March-April 2021
Dues to the Past
MCMLVI masks. For their sixty-fifth reunion, whatever form it may take, members of the College class of 1956 conceived of a custom mask subtly emblazoned with a golden MCMLVI. Design and manufacturing were overseen by the inimitable Daniel J. McCarron, …
Issue: March-April 2021
Brevia
Tables Turned Oprah Winfrey, who usually plays host on her talk show, will be the guest—and featured talker—in Tercentenary Theatre on May 30, when she appears as the principal speaker at Commencement day’s Afternoon Exercises—the annual meeting of the …
Issue: May-June 2013
Spring Sports, Spider Man
Spring , and young men’s thoughts turn to…exercise. The New Yorker ’s ever-young Roger Angell ’42, acclaimed for his baseball writing, summoned another sport, from his undergraduate days, in a 2011 letter included in his most recent collection, This Old …
Issue: May-June 2017
Harvard’s Social Media Influencers
Abigail Mack ’25 didn’t set out to become a minor internet celebrity; she just responded to a trend. Every year, thousands of high-school students post “reaction videos” of their getting accepted, waitlisted, or rejected from colleges. The more …
Issue: May-June 2022
Forum: Doing Less Harm
T he United States has far higher rates of firearm death than any of the more than two dozen other high-income countries (among them Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Spain, and the United Kingdom). In 2015, for example, children in the …
Issue: January-February 2020