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An Extraordinary Season
Regardless of your distance from greater Boston, you likely know that Harvard slogged through a semester of record-breaking—and patience-testing—winter weather. The type of meteorological event immortalized by Ralph Waldo Emerson in “The Snow-Storm” as …
Issue: May-June 2015
The Best of Times…
Harvard’s annual financial report, for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2016 (released in late October), was full of good tidings: operating revenue up 5.6 percent (more than a quarter-billion dollars), to nearly $4.8 billion; operating expenses up 5.3 …
Issue: January-February 2017
Celebrating Cinema
Four nights a week , anyone can saunter down to the lowest level of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, buy a ticket, and slide into a cushy seat at the Harvard Film Archive’s (HFA) cinémathèque to view “rare and scholarly works of art, films that …
Issue: January-February 2017
Off the Shelf
“Much of the time we spend in gatherings with other people disappoints us,” warns professional facilitator Priya Parker, M.P.P. ’12. After this deflating introduction, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters (Riverhead, $28) offers a breezy …
Issue: September-October 2018
Harvard Proponent
Photograph by Jim Harrison Walter H. Morris Jr. The Harvard Alumni Association’s new president, Walter H. Morris Jr. ’73, M.B.A. ’75, may have left the University’s classrooms years ago, but he has never stopped learning at Harvard. He often returns for …
Issue: September-October 2008
A Tale of Two Detectives
Lauren Mechling writes in the thriving young-adult genre. Above: The author's first solo novel. While preparing to interview Cecile von Ziegesar, author of the wildly popular Gossip Girl series, for a London newspaper, Lauren Mechling ’99 spent a week in …
Issue: September-October 2008
What Makes (and Remakes) a House
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) , in planning a major renovation of the 12 undergraduate residential Houses, has appointed a House Program Planning Committee “to examine the mission and purpose of House life and to develop an architectural space …
Issue: July-August 2008
A Lone Star Saga
“The best I can describe it,” says Justin Deabler, of the years he spent writing his semi-autobiographical debut novel, “is that I was trying to answer questions that nobody was around to answer anymore. And that I couldn’t let go of.” Those …
Issue: March-April 2021
The Arts as Essential Goods
“No man is an island; every book is a world.” The motto, adapted from John Donne, appears on a weathered sign for the ailing bookshop owned by the irascible A.J. Fikry. The depressive air is no mistake. Novelist Gabrielle Zevin ’00 wrote The Storied Life …
Issue: July-August 2020
Flocking to Finance
Recent graduates may take for granted the migration of one-fifth of their classmates into finance-sector jobs, but things haven’t always been this way. In a survey of 6,500 Harvard graduates from selected classes between 1969 and 1992, Claudia Goldin and …
Issue: May-June 2008
Decoding the Alphaviruses
The coronavirus pandemic was caused by a virus that made the leap from animals to humans. Responding quickly and effectively to such viruses requires some foreknowledge of how they enter human cells—often by using a receptor common to several species. …
Issue: May-June 2022
Theatrical Debut
Hasty Pudding Theatricals (HPT) returns to its historic home this year for its 160th production. (Since the inaugural show in 1844, the group has missed only four years, taking a hiatus during each of the two world wars.) But the theater at 10-12 Holyoke …
Issue: January-February 2008
Ghosts in the Yard
Richard Lawrence Robert Crowder, M.P.A. ’07 Kennedy School of Government, delivers the Graduate English Oration titled "Ghosts in the Yard" for Harvard's 356th Commencement Exercises. (Speech as prepared ) Some of you may have entered Harvard Yard today …
Crimson in Congress
In the aftermath of last November’s elections for the 110th Congress, one Harvard alumnus stood very much alone. Representative Thomas Petri ’62, LL.B. ’65, Republican of Wisconsin, is the sole remaining member of his party in the House to …
Issue: January-February 2007
Theater, Dance, and Media's "Next Act"
Through the door of Martin Puchner’s office in Farkas Hall, bursts of clapping, shouts, and laughter erupt from the class in session next door: “What’s So Funny? Introduction to Improvisational Comedy.” Some 140 students came to the course’s first …
Issue: May-June 2016