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Princess Not-So-Charming
“Fairy tales have always tapped into the subconscious, bringing to light children’s deepest fears,” says Soman Chainani ’01. In his new fantasy-adventure novel, The School for Good and Evil, he has brought that tenet into the twenty-first century. The …
Issue: May-June 2013
A Modest Generation
So what do we call ourselves? As labels for a generation go, The Silent Generation always struck me as singularly stupid; I don’t think we were any more silent or noisy than most generations. Our formative years were neither easy nor affluent ones: if our …
Issue: May-June 2005
Of Dumplings, Bok Choy, and the Politics of Emoji
In 2015, inspiration struck Jennifer 8. Lee ’99 like an apple from Newton’s tree. In her case, though, it was a dumpling. Lee and her friend Yiying Lu were texting about upcoming dinner plans. Lee sent over a picture of dumplings, and Lu went to her …
Off the Shelf
Interop, by John Palfrey ’94, J.D. ’01, and Urs Gasser, LL.M. ’03 (Basic Books, $28.99). Palfrey, formerly of the Law School and now headmaster of Phillips Academy Andover, and Gasser, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, …
Issue: September-October 2012
Reefs at Risk
Contemporary photographs by David Arnold Shallow-water coral reefs are best known for their beauty, and as home to rafts of colorful fish. That these complex ecosystems support a quarter of all marine species is less commonly appreciated. If the …
Issue: July-August 2011
Shaina Taub Shares Suffragists in Song
New York Times music critic Stephen Holden’s line about Shaina Taub—that she is a gravitational force “around whom others cluster like filings to a magnet”—came powerfully to mind on Monday night inside the Radcliffe Institute’s Knafel Center, where the …
Coming Apart Together
Like many writers , Shane McCrae, J.D. ’07, remembers clearly when he first took an interest in words, when the urge—and then the need—to write first grabbed him. It happened all at once, on October 25, 1990. He was 15 years old, living in Aloha, Oregon, …
Issue: November-December 2018
The Indispensable Power
Diplomacy has never been so important as now, when we are confronting the most serious crises since the Second World War: the global pandemic and economic collapse. When we emerge finally from the grip of the coronavirus, Americans will need to account …
Issue: July-August 2020
Harvard’s 2016 Honorary-Degree Recipients
During the Morning Exercises of the 365rd Commencement, on May 26, Harvard planned to confer honorary degrees on six men and three women. Among them are: a lawyer who has pioneered cases ending discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (now also …
“No Limits” to China-Russia Relations?
How might the war in Ukraine affect the relationship between Russia and China—perhaps the most important prospective big-power alliance in the world? “The honest answer with a lot of these issues is, it’s such a black box that we don’t really know,” China …
“Little Shards of Dissonance”
At some point , while preparing for the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, Davóne Tines ’09 and Michael Shachter ’09 were freshly struck by their circumstances. Their piece Were You There , a musical meditation on racial violence, starts with Handel and …
Issue: September-October 2018
Allston Agonistes
For three decades, “Allston” has represented what an investor might consider Harvard’s ultimate option. It is the way for an increasingly built-out, landlocked institution nearing its 400th anniversary to continue to dream and grow. But at some point, the …
Issue: September-October 2018
Highbrow Lingerie
Lingerie and literature don’t come together that often, but when naming her intimates brand, fashion designer Laura Mehlinger ’01 turned to Vladimir Nabokov. Lola Haze™ alludes to Lolita , the subject of Mehlinger’s senior honors thesis in English. “Lola” …
Issue: May-June 2010
A Collage of Colleges
“Why should all of the creative and liberating ideas for liberal education be left to the small residential liberal arts colleges?” That is the question, posed by Plummer professor of Christian morals Peter J. Gomes, with which the curriculum-review …
Issue: January-February 2006
“That Human Element”
A year and a half ago, in the early months of the pandemic, Houghton archivist Dorothy Berry began a project to digitize materials from the library’s collection related to African American history and culture. This January, the finished product made its …