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Mysterious Minis
Two miniature mosaics, each the size of a Kindle and shrouded in mystery, depict 41 male figures. Researchers at Dumbarton Oaks, where the mosaics are part of the Byzantine collection, know roughly when they were made (the early fourteenth century) and …
Issue: March-April 2024
Governance Reform and Shared Value
How can business help mend the broken U.S. political system—and even step up to fulfill the social needs government fails to meet? Lawrence University Professor Michael Porter, perhaps the best-known scholar of corporate strategy, turned his attention …
AI and Democracy
History will look back on 2024 as the first AI election, said Shorenstein Center director Nancy Gibbs in her introduction to the event, “ AI and its Implications for Democracy.” That sense of the historical moment pervaded the ensuing conversation among …
Hearing History
Lei Liang’s Xiaoxiang, a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize, is not the virtuosic tour de force one might expect of a saxophone concerto, a form showcasing technical skill. Liang’s starring instrument trembles, croons, and cries, traversing the …
Issue: January-February 2016
Mimicking Organs
Could tiny , translucent chips that mimic human organs replace animal testing for drug development? That reality may be coming, according to researchers at the Wyss Institute who have developed organs-on-chips: flexible polymer microchips (about the size …
Issue: January-February 2016
Off the Shelf
Picturing Frederick Douglass, by John Stauffer, professor of English and of African and African American studies, Zoe Trodd, Ph.D. ’09, and Celeste-Marie Bernier (Liveright, $49.95). An “illustrated biography” built around a sumptuous catalog focused on …
Issue: November-December 2015
Disturbed, Not Surprised: Students Respond to Sexual-Conduct Survey
Undergraduates expressed grave concerns about the widespread nonconsensual sexual contact on campus reported in a survey released on September 21 , and about a potential disconnect between Harvard’s administration and students—issues that surfaced quickly …
Setting the Stage
L ondon’s Chelsea Theatre can be found off a main road in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, a neighborhood where household incomes are typically three times the national average. By contrast, the theater itself is tucked into the World’s End …
Issue: May-June 2020
Not Holding Out for a Hero
Cliff Chiang ’96 can still name the first four comics he ever read— Uncanny X-Men, Alpha Flight, Cloak & Dagger, and Fantastic Four —the adventures of caped crusaders and mutant teens which, in the summer of 1983, he pored over in the back seat on a …
Issue: September-October 2015
One-Quarter of Eligible Professors Accept Retirement Program
of the 176 senior faculty members in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and four professional schools who were offered a retirement program last December , 46—or 26 percent—have enrolled. That information, and data in another recent report to the …
The New Tenure Track
Mary Lewis, a member of the faculty since 2002 and previously Loeb associate professor of the social sciences, has been named professor of history. Gita Gopinath, a member of the faculty since 2005 and previously associate professor of economics, has been …
Issue: September-October 2010
Under Review: Tony Saich on Chinese Communism at 100
Tony Saich begins his magisterial account of the hundred-year history of the Chinese Communist Party (with publication timed for the centennial, this July) with a conundrum. The CCP today has almost 90 million members. With branches in more than 4.5 …
Issue: July-August 2021
Harvard, H.H.R., Houghton
Henry Hobson Richardson , A.B. 1859, the leading nineteenth-century American architect—Boston’s Trinity Church, a major role in the design of the New York State Capitol, libraries, important commercial buildings, sumptuous homes—happily left his mark on …
Issue: November-December 2024
A Fictional Century
In the opening pages of his new book, Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel , Edwin Frank ’82 tries to explain exactly what he’s up to. This turns out to be a slippery task. Stranger Than Fiction is a book about books, but it’s not a …
Issue: November-December 2024
“We Will All Be Arguing”
During this semester ’s opening exercises, University leaders were at great pains to encourage the Harvard community to live up to its ideal of forthright discussion, at a time when the wider society seems to be losing the habit. Appearing at these …
Lydialyle Gibson , Jonathan Shaw
Issue: November-December 2022