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Peter Thiel on Why Monopolies Matter
In conversations about the economy, monopoly can often be a dirty word. But entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel shared his far more iconoclastic view of the business world at an event at Harvard Business School (HBS) on Thursday, arguing that …
Approaching the Arts Anew
Harvard president Drew Faust made the inaugural performance at the New College Theatre, on November 1, the setting for her announcement of a University-wide arts initiative. A faculty task force involving several Harvard schools will explore the role of …
Issue: January-February 2008
The Endowment: Up, and Upheaval
A strong year for investors generally was a very strong year for the University. Harvard Management Company (HMC), concluding its first full year under new leadership, reported on August 21 that the endowment had risen to $34.9 billion during the fiscal …
Issue: November-December 2007
A New University for Vietnam
The government of Vietnam has approved in principle the establishment of Fulbright University Vietnam (FUV), that country’s first private, nonprofit institution of higher education. FUV will be based upon the Fulbright Economics Teaching Program (FETP) , …
Ripening Nicely
Soon Harvard’s sidewalk superintendents will turn their attention to Allston because that’s where the hardhats will go. For the next 50 years, idle observers will oversee workers as they erect 10 million square feet of buildings there and increase the …
Issue: May-June 2007
Cambridge 02138
A Note to Readers We hope that you are safe and well—and that by the time this issue is posted online and reaches your mailbox, humanity will have made significant progress in reducing the baleful effects of the coronavirus (due in part to the …
Issue: July-August 2020
Harvard Reports a Significant Surplus
The University’s financial report for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2018, published today, reflects results from before Lawrence S. Bacow became president , on July 1, but depicts the conditions and resources he and his deans now have to work …
A Space “to Convene, to Learn, and to Celebrate”
Despite rainy weather and the mounting academic demands of the fall semester, students, staff, and faculty trekked across the river and the HBS campus for a symposium on the state of democracy at Harvard Business School (HBS). The event took place inside …
The Fix in Fossil Fuels
The United States is wasting more than $4 billion a year by giving oil and gas companies tax breaks that do not benefit consumers or the economy, says Joseph Aldy, assistant professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government and a former …
Issue: January-February 2014
Thinking about Space
In a seminar room on the fifth floor of the Graduate School of Design’s Gund Hall, instructor in architecture Lisa Haber-Thomson is looking over a 3-D rendering of a tall and skinny apartment complex comprised of bright red, off-kilter stacked cubes and …
Issue: September-October 2018
The Perfect Amateur
For John Updike ’54, Litt.D. ’92, visiting museums is not a chore but a pleasure, one that brings back fond early memories of trips to the Reading (Pennsylvania) Museum with his mother. As the writer makes clear in his—barely—fictional 1967 …
Issue: March-April 2006
Brevia
Professorship Undone A $2.5-million gift to Harvard Divinity School by United Arab Emirates president Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan , made in 2000 in support of a professorship of Islamic religious studies, has been returned. Students and others had …
Issue: November-December 2004
An Obligation to Dignity
“If it was a paperback, it sounded damn near like birds’ wings fluttering.” That’s how Reginald Dwayne Betts, speaking at the Graduate School of Design on Tuesday evening, described the underground library that inmates had built in the prison where he was …
China’s Excess Wind Energy
There’s a problem with sustainable energy, and it will only grow with time. Now that wind and solar have become cheaper sources of electricity than fossil fuels in some places, the problem is intermittency—what to do when the wind dies or the sun goes …
Issue: November-December 2021
Lowell House Renovations: An Inside Look
“They used to sleep on Lowell; now they[’re] jealous of our renovations,” croons Eric Tarlin ’21 on Lowell House’s 2019 Housing Day music video. Based on “Congratulations,” a swaggering, autotune-heavy hit by rapper Post Malone, “Renovations” …