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Endowments: The Specter of Taxation
After a year in which President Drew Faust and fellow university leaders successfully persuaded members of Congress to sustain federal funding for scientific research—in opposition to the Trump administration’s budget outline—they now find the tax …
James W. Breyer Elected to Harvard Corporation
Venture capitalist James W. Breyer, M.B.A. '87, a partner at Accel Partners , has been elected a fellow of the Harvard Corporation, the University's senior governing board. In the news announcement , President Drew Faust and senior fellow Robert D. …
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
In Africa, Food vs. Climate?
Though scientists have long known that Africa is a major contributor to rising levels of atmospheric methane, the primary culprit has been a mystery: emissions from the typical sources, such as wetlands and landfills, couldn’t account for the total …
Issue: January-February 2025
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
The Director’s Half-Decade
With The Harvard Campaign concluded and a new University president in office, the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) has pivoted to take on new challenges and priorities. The organization is charged with engaging a wildly diverse cohort of 371,000 alumni …
Issue: May-June 2019
“No more pencils, no more books…”
Even in elementary school, one suspects, the incursion of technology—tablets, laptops, smartphones—has now rendered all but obsolete students’ venerable end-of-year ditty: “No more pencils/no more books/no more teachers’ dirty looks….” In the College …
Issue: May-June 2019
The “Upstander”
Dean Martha L. Minow has two desks in her Harvard Law School office. The one she sits at is a rosewood partners’ desk, wide enough for two people to work at face to face. It belonged to Joseph Story, A.B. 1798, LL.D. 1821, who in 1812, at 32, became the …
Salads with Panache
The high desert and gourmet salads; experience as both a fashionista and a farmer. Unlikely pairings apparently come naturally to Erin Wade ’03, farmer, chef, and owner of Vinaigrette, a salad bistro in Santa Fe. The menu at her 68-seat establishment (100 …
Issue: November-December 2011
Unveiled
Grenville Lindall Winthrop, A.B. 1886, LL.B. '89, had a passion for beauty. He had financial resources, leisure, and eclectic tastes, and indulged his passion hugely. Yet, from what one may know of him, he seems in certain aspects of his life a pathetic …
Issue: March-April 2003
Making America Competitive Again
Racial unrest, crumbling infrastructure, and a failing public education system are just a few of the many serious problems the United States government can’t seem to fix. Political gridlock, the cause, is so deep-set that some business leaders worry it …
Issue: July-August 2021
VES’s Valedictory
Harvard’s department of visual and environmental studies (VES) will emerge, like a butterfly from a chrysalis, with a new identity better reflecting what it actually does , if the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) embraces a proposal to change its name …
Summers to Direct Center for Business and Government
As reported , Eliot University Professor Lawrence H. Summers has concluded his service as director of the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama, and has resumed his academic position at the University . He will be based at the Harvard …
HAA Award Winners
The Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) Awards were established in 1990 to recognize outstanding service to the University through alumni activities. This year’s awards ceremony took place on October 14, during the HAA board of directors’ fall meeting. Six …
Issue: November-December 2010
The Teddy Bear Effect
Most Fortune 500 CEOs—roughly 95 percent of them, in fact—are white men. Line up headshots of these leaders and plenty of pronounced chins, square jaws, salt-and-pepper hair, and other physical features suggesting maturity, masculinity, and gravitas are …
Issue: January-February 2019