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Urban Forays
Compared to that vast metropolitan zone to the southwest where concrete environs pack in the summer heat like a giant beehive oven, Greater Boston is an airy, pleasant place to spend the summer. The student population ebbs and easy access to open space, …
Issue: July-August 2015
Josiah Meadows ’23 Latin Salutatory
The Value of a Harvard Education Josiah Meadows ’23, Latin Salutatory DE FRVCTIBVS INSTITVTIONIS HARVARDIANÆ ORATIO SALVTATORIA CANTABRIGIÆ NOV-ANGLORVM IN COMITIIS ACADEMICIS HABITA A. D. VIII. KAL. IVN. ANN. DOM. MMXXIII. REIPVB. AMERICANÆ CCXLVII. …
David Ellwood to Step Down
David T. Ellwood ’75, Ph.D. ’81, dean of the Harvard Kennedy School since his appointment by President Lawrence H. Summers in mid 2004 , announced today that he would step down next June 30. Ellwood is the longest-serving among the current decanal cohort: …
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 …
A Model City
‘‘ Homo sapiens tends to fall in love with miniatures,” says Fred Gevalt ’72, M.Arch. ’76. In his case, over the past eight years, in the basement of his home in Arlington, Massachusetts, Gevalt has painstakingly built a complex diorama depicting an …
Issue: January-February 2025
A Tribute to Harry Lewis
At a Wednesday event billed as “A Celebration of Computer Science at Harvard in Honor of Harry Lewis,” one of his former teaching fellows described how Lewis had “given us the license” to grade any programming assignment that “had an inline constant” with …
Cultural Commitments
As Harvard emerges from a global pandemic that has upset work norms everywhere, it faces its own questions about the kind of workplace it will become. The University took a productive step when, despite initial inclinations, it largely maintained service …
Issue: March-April 2022
An Egyptian Archaeological Treasure
The discovery of a trove of diaries written by Egyptian workers in the early twentieth century has brought together Egyptologists across the globe in an effort to transcribe and study the rare primary sources, which lend a local perspective to a “golden …
Sanctions Complications
The College’s impending sanctions on members of single-gender final clubs, fraternities, and sororities have engendered fierce, even bitter, disagreements over students’ rights, governance, and whether the policy will effect needed changes in …
The Lawyer Librettist
“Lucifer’s car was towed,” someone announced to the room—they’d have to start without him. The three Fates reviewed some new choreography; by the piano, Persephone, a tall soprano, nervously rolled a pencil between her fingers as she approached a tricky …
Issue: January-February 2017
John Adams at Harvard
Editor’s note: As early-action applicants to the College class of 2021 anxiously await a response, the account of an admissions ordeal in 1751 may offer perspective. Richard Alan Ryerson ’64 includes the passage in his new book, John Adams’s Republic: The …
Issue: November-December 2016
Justice Elena Kagan, in Dissent
A dissent by Justice Elena Kagan, J.D. ’86, in June illustrated why she won acclaim as a writer when she began to publish opinions after joining the Supreme Court in 2010. In the case, the six Republican-appointed justices made it much harder for the …
Issue: November-December 2022
Harvard Endowment Increases 4.3 Percent to $40.9 Billion
Highlights for fiscal 2019: •The endowment’s value was $40.9 billion as of this past June 30, the end of fiscal year 2019—an increase of $1.7 billion (4.3 percent) from $39.2 billion a year earlier . •In a year when other institutions’ endowments are …
Bureau of Study Counsel, R.I.P.
The College today announced a significant change in academic counseling, including a fall-semester transition from the Bureau of Study Counsel (BSC) to a new entity, named the Academic Resource Center (ARC), which will likely result in a much-changed …
Holocaust Remembrance Exhibit Comes to Harvard
On Monday afternoon , Jewish students, Harvard administrators, and community members gathered in front of Widener Library to open “ Hate Ends Now ,” a nationally touring exhibit that displays a replica of the cattle cars used to transport Jews and others …