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The 2011 Honorary Degree Recipients
The University announced that at the morning exercises today, Harvard will confer honorary degrees on six men and three women. Brief profiles appear here; for the formal degree citations, check back later. Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee Plácido Domingo The …
Academic Harvard: The Inaugural Symposiums
Visiting dignitaries from other colleges and universities, and friends of Harvard present for the occasion, were served a continental breakfast-cum-edification at “A Taste of Harvard,” under the tent on the Science Center Plaza: fuel plus exhibitions on …
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
Brevia
Design Departure Alan A. Altshuler Kris Snibbe / Harvard News Office Alan A. Altshuler , dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design since February 2005 (and acting dean for several months before that), announced on October 23 that he would step down at …
Issue: January-February 2007
Independent Yet Integral, a Relevant "Refuge for Scholars": The Radcliffe Institute at 10
For MIT geophysicist Maria Zuber , a 2003 Radcliffe Fellowship opened her eyes to the benefits of bringing a humanistic approach to arguing for the sciences—a discovery that led her to use a quote from Maya Angelou as she made her pitch for NASA to award …
Supporting Young Scientists
What does it mean to be part of a community of scientists? For Chimdimnma (“Chi-Chi”) Esimai ’08, it meant, for one thing, having a ready group of basketball opponents. On a typical evening this summer, Esimai finished work in the Engineering Sciences …
Issue: September-October 2006
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
“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
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 …
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
Raising Voices
During the University’s traumatic fall semester, several harshly critical voices attracted outsized attention. Hedge fund financier Bill Ackman ’88, M.B.A. ’92, took to X to bash pro-Hamas students; assail then-President Claudine Gay; and declare …
Issue: May-June 2024
The Enigmatic Mr. Putin
Who is Mr. Putin?” The question reverberated in world capitals when Boris Yeltsin called a press conference on August 9, 1999, to introduce Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin as his choice for prime minister of Russia and as his heir when a presidential …
Issue: May-June 2007
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