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“Panic” and “Friendship” at Phi Beta Kappa
The 220th Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) Literary Exercises, conducted Tuesday morning at 11 in Sanders Theatre, began the formal activities of Commencement week, providing the customary intellectual and artistic launch for the academic and emotional celebrations …
Living Large in Tiny Apartments
In the 1960s, Volkswagen became famous for ads featuring tiny pictures of their cars with the slogan, “Think small.” Now architects Eric Bunge, M.Arch. ’96, Mimi Hoang, M.Arch. ’98, and Alphonse Lembo, M.U.P. ’10, have put their own spin on that memorable …
Issue: May-June 2013
Harvard’s “Treehouse” in Allston
Harvard announced on December 14 the creation of its first University-wide conference center, which will serve as a gateway to its planned enterprise research campus (ERC) on Western Avenue in Allston. The timber-framed venue will be named the David …
Harvard Divinity School Receives Christian Studies Endowment
Harvard Divinity School (HDS) today announced that artist and activist Susan Shallcross Swartz and her husband, James R. Swartz ’64, have donated $10 million to establish the Susan Shallcross Swartz Endowment for Christian Studies, in support of new …
Finding a New Footing
Although summer provided a break from a financial annus horribilis , Harvard continued to grapple with the fallout from the projected 30 percent decline in the value of its endowment assets—and the resulting need to “do business differently,” as President …
Issue: September-October 2009
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
A Scholar in the House
Tradition and the twenty-first century were tangled together in Barker Center’s Thompson Room on the afternoon of February 11, when Drew Gilpin Faust conducted her first news conference as Harvard’s president-elect. Daniel Chester French’s bronze bust of …
Issue: July-August 2007
Elbow Room
No outward sign sets the pale yellow house at 31 Inman Street apart from its neighbors. Someone going on a literary pilgrimage in Cambridge might start a mile away, at 104 Irving Street, where e.e. cummings ’15 grew up; then head west, to 16 Ash Street, …
Issue: March-April 2016
Criminal Injustice
In early 2014, Alec Karakatsansis, J.D. ’08, used some of the money that he and a law-school classmate had recently received from the school’s Public Service Venture Fund seed grant to buy a plane ticket to Birmingham, Alabama, and rent a car. He planned …
Issue: September-October 2017
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 …
On the Road with Death
In a world where buses are "flying coffins" and "moving morgues" and pedestrians should tremble, pulblic-health experts take on a neglected epidemic. by Christopher Reed On June 23, 1998 , Michael Reich, vacationer, was driving with his family in a rented …
Issue: November-December 2002
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. …
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 …
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
The Untold Story of Watercolors
Watercolors are finally having their moment at Harvard Art Museums’ (HAM) new exhibition “American Watercolors, 1880-1990: Into the Light.” Composed of 100 paintings usually kept in storage, the exhibit “provides an opportunity for us to enjoy these …