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Why Ivy Athletes Score in Careers
What role should athletics play in Ivy League college admissions? Do athletes merely take spots from more academically qualified applicants? Or does participation in sports build a special kind of human capital that isn’t taught in classrooms, one that …
Issue: November-December 2024
Designating Dunster
Harvard announced in mid July that Dunster will become the first of its 12 residential undergraduate Houses to be fully renewed under an ambitious, multidecade program . (Renovating the River Houses alone is expected to cost more than $1 billion .) …
Issue: September-October 2012
The Mystery of Smell
In the early weeks of the pandemic, as scientists and physicians scrambled to find the edges of this new, dangerous disease—how it spread from person to person, how it behaved inside the human body, and how they might be able to stop it—one emerging …
Issue: November-December 2021
Harvard College Admissions Rate Falls to 5.9 Percent
Harvard College announced today that 2,032 applicants had been offered admission to the class of 2016, entering this August—5.9 percent of 34,302 applicants. The admissions rate last year was 6.2 percent (2,158 offers of admission extended to 34,950 …
Healthy Plate, Healthy Planet
F rank Hu and Kentucky Fried Chicken arrived in Beijing around the same time. Hu, a recent graduate of Tongji Medical University, in Wuhan, had never seen a restaurant like it. Three-floored, gleaming, and distinctly Western in atmosphere, KFC proved …
Issue: March-April 2020
A. Clayton Spencer Appointed President of Bates
A. Clayton Spencer, vice president for policy since 2005, has been elected the eighth president of Bates College , effective July 1. Spencer has worked in Massachusetts Hall for a decade and a half, serving presidents Neil L. Rudenstine, Lawrence H. …
“Even Higher” Education
Between 2011 and 2036, Harvard’s river-spanning campus in Cambridge and Allston became a magnet for mature professionals. It offered a unique advantage not available online: access to idea exchange and connections across the whole University, including …
Issue: September-October 2011
Under (Green) Wraps
Nominally, Harvard’s official color is crimson. But this summer, a lot of the place went green—with numerous sites swaddled in or fenced off by construction wrapping, Christo-style, during another busy season of renewal, renovation, and repair. The …
Issue: September-October 2019
Rebuilt?
Last March, Lavietes Pavilion, the home of Harvard basketball, took on an unusual feel . Coaches in sports jackets gave way to construction workers in neon vests, whose boots marked the hardwood where sneakers usually squeaked. The tabletop machine used …
Science Dean, Soccer Judge
In an all-volunteer youth soccer league, brave parents must rise to the occasion and create order from cleated and shin-guarded chaos. In the early 2000s, one such parent was Frank Doyle, now dean of the Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied …
Issue: July-August 2019
Allston Development Director Departs—Updated
Christopher M. Gordon, who joined the University in 2005 to direct accelerated development of the University’s planned campus growth in Allston, has decided to relinquish his position. President Drew Faust announced in an e-mail today that Gordon, who is …
Bulfinch Magic
Architect Charles Bulfinch performed a death-defying feat in University Hall 188 years ago. He caused to be built a staircase of heavy granite, tons of it, that would float in space, supported (presumably) by its own interlocking steps. In fact, nobody …
Pulitzer Gift of Art Works and $45 Million Boosts Harvard Art Museum
Culminating her lifelong devotion to art collecting, connoisseurship, and scholarship—and a matching engagement with the University—Emily Rauh Pulitzer, A.M. '63, has given the Harvard Art Museum 31 important works of modern and contemporary art (one of …
Dedicating Maxwell Dworkin
How is it that a famous liberal-arts center like Harvard, home to what is arguably the world's first computer, could also be called the birthplace of the world's most successful software company? Are we sure we're not talking about MIT? At the dedication …
University People
Overseers Elevated The Board of Overseers, the University’s junior governing board, has elected Merrick B. Garland ’ 74, J.D. ’77, as president and Ann M. Fudge , M.B.A. ’77, as vice chair of the executive committee for 2009-2010. Garland is a judge on …
Issue: July-August 2009