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The Health Benefits of Owning a Pet
Today is National Pet Day , and pet owners have another reason to celebrate: their pets are helping them live healthier, longer lives. “Pet owners are less likely to die,” said Harvard Medical School clinical assistant professor Beth Frates, citing the …
Off the Shelf
Health Care Reform, by Jonathan Gruber, Ph.D. ’92, with HP Newquist, illustrated by Nathan Schreiber (Hill and Wang, $30; $13.95 paper). Think “Healthcare reform: the comic book.” An illustrated guide to the new law by the MIT professor of economics who …
Issue: January-February 2012
“Design Is Not an Intellectual Exercise”
Standing before a graduating class of soon-to-be architects and designers and urban planners at the Graduate School of Design’s Class Day, Teju Cole—the Vidal professor of the practice of creative writing—wanted to talk about doors. Real doors, but also …
The Poco of Pocos
The “Poco of Pocos” was Bernard Butekan, a secondhand-clothes dealer (“clo’man”), a Harvard celebrity, and the first in a series of rag dealers who played a surprisingly large role in the culture of students, faculty members, and the broader University …
Issue: September-October 2021
The First-Generation Gap
On any given day in Harvard Yard, you can find students wearing shirts that say “Primus Pride.” They are members of the First Generation Student Union (FGSU), a student organization created in 2013 that exists, according to its president Andrew Pérez ’20, …
Arts First
“The artist is always working with mingled gladness and disappointment towards an ideal he never attains. It is his struggle toward that ideal which makes his life a happy one.” — President Charles W. Eliot It’s been quite a year …
Issue: March-April 2017
Jimmy Carter and James Agee ’32
When he was running for president in 1976, Jimmy Carter was asked to name his favorite book. He said, “strangely enough,” it was Let Us Now Praise Famous Men , with text by James Agee ’32, and photographs by Walker Evans, published in 1941 when Carter was …
The Post-Roe World
“Clarity is power,” said Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) dean Michelle Williams, at the school’s panel last week on the post- Roe United States. “American people need a clear understanding of the science and consequences of depriving …
A Man and His Castle
Hammond Castle Museum is a romantic pastiche of medieval and Renaissance European architecture, a passionate testament to the past where John Hays Hammond Jr. foresaw the technological future. The prolific inventor built the massive dwelling, with its …
Issue: November-December 2020
Laughing at Slavery
In his 1997 book Rock This! the black comedian Chris Rock sends up the “Uncle Tom” stereotype of a subservient African American who kowtows to the majority culture. Rock affectionately describes his gay uncle, whose name is Tom. “We call him Aunt Tom,” he …
Issue: March-April 2009
FAS: Faculty and Fisc
At a November 8 reception in University Hall, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) celebrated Michael D. Smith for his 11 years of service as dean, concluded last August, conferring on him an amusing rendering of all the faculty’s leaders, from the …
Issue: January-February 2019
The Urban Jobs Crisis
Editor’s note: Background information on the charts accompanying this article (Figures 1 , 2 , and 3 ) appears in the text below. In his State of the Union Address on February 13, President Barack Obama urged that young people be given the opportunity …
James M. Quane , William Julius ... , Jackelyn Hwang
Issue: May-June 2013
A Quantum Science Initiative
Quantum science—the physics and engineering of the world at sub-microscopic scales—got a boost today as Harvard formally announced an initiative that will combine basic and applied research into the realm of the very small, as well as foster …
Raiders Rehabilitated
Gordon gekko, the antihero of the 1987 movie Wall Street , epitomizes the excesses of the U.S. financial sector in the 1980s. Gekko embraces insider trading and the strip-and-flip model of the hostile takeover—buy a company, ruthlessly lay off workers, …
Issue: July-August 2008
Well Done
The Harvard Alumni Association Awards were established in 1990 to recognize outstanding service to Harvard University through alumni activities. This year’s recipients were to be honored on October 18, during the Harvard Alumni Association’s board of …
Issue: November-December 2007