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Reconfiguring the Curriculum
Much work on refashioning the undergraduate curriculum remains for the next academic year, but the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) concluded its spring meetings by adopting several significant changes. Students will have more time to choose their …
Issue: July-August 2006
Francis James Child
Francis James Child , A.B. 1846, was a model of nineteenth-century academic achievement. Named Harvard’s Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory at 26, he was one of his century’s leading Chaucer scholars and received honorary degrees from his alma …
Issue: May-June 2006
Off the Shelf
Who the Hell Are We Fighting? The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars , by C. Michael Hiam ( Steerforth Press , $25.95). Here’s a tightly written narrative history of what happened when the late CIA analyst Samuel A. Adams ’55, L ’61, …
Issue: May-June 2006
George Ticknor
By today's standards, Harvard College before the Civil War was a provincial academy, competent (judged Henry Adams) at preparing students to become "respectable citizens," but effectively indifferent to the advances in knowledge beginning to shape the …
Issue: January-February 2005
Harvard Great Performances: Terence Patterson ’00
Had events not dictated otherwise, this week the Crimson football team would have been battling Brown at Providence. Instead we are taking another trip down memory lane. (As is Bloomberg News Radio, which on Saturdays this fall will rebroadcast classic …
Apollo 17 Turns 50
The photograph is 50 years old now, a black-and-white image of two Harvard alumni meeting in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. One of them, Jonathan Smart ’69, wears a diver’s wetsuit with the hood pulled back. The other, Harrison Schmitt, Ph.D. ’64, has …
Issue: November-December 2022
Brevia
Top Billing for Two Bills Kristie Bull / Associated Press William H. Gates III Charlie Riedel / Associated Press William J. Clinton Former U.S. president Bill Clinton will be the class of 2007’s Class Day speaker on June 6. Of late he has …
Issue: May-June 2007
Study Abroad, Honors at Home
The faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) has made it easier for Harvard College students to study abroad, and more difficult to earn academic honors. FAS also adopted a new grading scale which, in concert with jawboning, may slow or even reverse grade …
Issue: July-August 2002
The Fire in “A Burning”
In early June, as the pandemic’s disproportionate toll on racial minorities and the poor came into sharper focus and protests roiled the country in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, Megha Majumdar ’10 released her first novel, A Burning . Set in India, …
Issue: September-October 2020
Emily Broad Leib: What Can be Done About Food Waste?
What Can be Done About Food Waste? Emily Broad Leib, founder and director of Harvard’s Food Law and Policy Clinic, discusses how to reduce food waste in the United States and abroad. Topics include the confusion caused by misleading date labels, the …
“Our History Is a Treasure Box”
It started 150 years ago , with the idea that perhaps Harvard should offer a graduate program. Initially, the College faculty balked: wouldn’t a graduate school siphon funding and attention from undergraduates? Not according to President Charles William …
Sweets for All
People are picky about pastries. One lady’s scone is another’s scorn. A gentleman’s prized honey-glazed donut is another’s adamant do not. What follows is a very short list of bakeries that rose above derision during an impromptu office taste-test. A …
Issue: March-April 2016
'60s Generation Confronts '90s Protest
When David Illingworth ’71 and Allan Ryan went to college, the causes of the day were civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam War. Now, campus progressive groups are rallying to oppose sweatshop labor and support a “living wage” for University …
Why the Grad Student Union Election Is Still Contested
Harvard’s graduate-student union election ended inconclusively last December. Although 1,456 students voted against unionization, and 1,272 voted in favor, more than 300 additional ballots—larger than the voting margin—remain under challenge. During the …
An “Egalitarian Curiosity”
What obstacles impede the free exchange of ideas in college classrooms? And how might they be overcome? “Free Speech on Campus,” a September 20 talk by Vuilleumier professor of philosophy Edward “Ned” Hall that was followed by a response from Conant …