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Christina Gao: No Regrets
Christina Gao ’16-17 used to be a skater first, a student second. Ever since her parents signed her up for figure-skating lessons at age seven, her life has been as much of a balancing act as the sport itself. Growing up, the slender girl from Cincinnati …
The Tiger Daughter, Intact
Lulu Chua-Rubenfeld ’18 was once considered one of the most abused children in the Western world. A main character in her mother’s bestselling parenting memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother , Lulu starred in many anecdotes that drew slings and arrows …
Spotting Pollutants from Space
In April, a SpaceX rocket carried a commercial communications satellite to a geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles above the equator. The satellite carried an important payload: a $93-million instrument for measuring pollution across North America, …
Issue: July-August 2023
Surplus Surprise…and the Endowment’s Evolution
The University’s financial report for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2018, published on October 25, revealed a fifth consecutive budget surplus—nearly $200 million—in part reflecting continued U.S. economic growth and the benefits accruing from the …
Issue: January-February 2019
Trailblazer in Space Science: The Legacy of Harvard's Ursula B. Marvin
Among Harvard’s greatest treasures are people who revel in discovery and disperse dusty clouds of ignorance. Among them was Ursula B. Marvin, who teased solar system secrets from meteorites, contributed to deciphering the Moon’s evolution from Apollo …
Issue: July-August 2023
Engineering Virus-free Cells… and Organs?
In January 2022, a 57-year-old man named David Bennett Sr. made history when he became the first human patient to receive a heart transplanted from a genetically modified pig. The procedure, known as a xenotransplant, has been heralded as the solution for …
Issue: July-August 2023
“Authentic” Versus “Constrained” Choices in the Classroom
A professor in an introductory science course discovers that some students are falling behind in their work, apparently because they haven’t bought the textbook. “Buy the book, don’t be cheap,” he exhorts. For students who have a parental credit card, or …
Endowment Value Rises to $32.7 Billion
HIGHLIGHTS: Endowment valued at $32.7 billion as of June 30, up $2.0 billion (6.5 percent) from $30.7 billion a year earlier. Harvard Management Company records 11.3 percent investment return on endowment assets during fiscal year 2013, after negative …
Christine Heenan to Depart
Updated 10-1-124, 10:00 p.m. Christine Heenan, vice president for public affairs and communications, will step down from that post on January 31 and move to part-time, advisory status through the end of the academic year as she begins a transition into …
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 …
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) , …
The Good Fight
In 1831 , the abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Maria W. Stewart lived within Boston’s small but vibrant Beacon Hill community of free blacks who had come to view the city as something of a haven. American abolitionism was gaining momentum, and …
Issue: November-December 2023
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
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