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“A Rule-Based System”
UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, LL.D. '04, spoke as the guest of the Harvard Alumni Association at its annual Commencement day meeting. Excerpts from his address, "Three Crises, and the Need for American Leadership," follow. Kofi Annan Photograph by …
Issue: July-August 2004
Redefining Obesity
Alarmingly, the rate of obesity in the United States has tripled during the past six decades: according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 42 percent of American adults are obese. Globally, more than a billion people live with the …
Issue: July-August 2024
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s Public Health Address
My warm greetings and congratulations to all 2021 graduates of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, to Dean Michelle Williams, and to all faculty, family, and friends. I want to start by thanking Dean Williams and the School of Public Health for …
“Harvard Guy” Ryan Fitzpatrick Rides High in the NFL
Led by quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick ’05, the resurgent Buffalo Bills are treating their long-suffering fans to something resembling a dream season. The Bills had victories in four of their first six games, including an upset of the top-tier New England …
Remaking the Grid
Paolo Pasco ’22 was still a high-school freshman when he learned that one of his crossword puzzles had been accepted for publication by The New York Times . “I was just getting out of gym class,” he recalls, “and I saw the subject line “crossword yes” …
Issue: March-April 2019
Upstairs, Downstairs
When the janitors and dining hall staff arrive at 6 a.m., the Currier House dining hall resembles a poorly conceived seventeenth-century Dutch still life: blue plastic trays piled on top of one another, cups running over, remnants of yesterday's kung kung …
A Verdant Cultural Retreat
Before stepping through the Gothic Revival gates of Forest Hills Cemetery, tour guide Dee Morris tells visitors, “Take your troubles, anything that’s bothering you, and leave them out here.” The 275 acres of towering trees, winding paths, sculptures, and …
Issue: March-April 2022
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 …
Yesterday's News
1922 An explosion of liquid oxygen in Jefferson Labs takes the lives of an engineering graduate student and a carpenter working in the building. 1927 The John W. Weeks Memorial Bridge is dedicated on May 14. Henry Hornblower, representing the firm of …
Issue: May-June 2002
Volatility Spikes
Investing in the stock market can seem like walking a tightrope above a financial chasm. But instead of balancing themselves against unforeseen risks, many investors fail to diversify their portfolios and wiggle onto that tightrope on just one foot. …
Issue: May-June 2002
Connecting the Harvard Dots
If graduating seniors wondered whether Commencement marked the end of all their Harvard fun and learning, Robert R. Bowie Jr. ’73 was there on Class Day to tell them, “Hell, no!” In fact, the new president of the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) promised, …
Issue: September-October 2010
A Lifetime of Sharing
In the late 1970s, I attended my first Class of 1960 luncheon, in those days held at the downtown Harvard Club of Boston. It quickly became clear that these gatherings were not just reunion-planning meetings composed of class officers, nor primarily …
Issue: May-June 2010
Darkness Visible
On an August evening at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, having hiked past the lawn concert of dirgeful folk music—an audience of couples propped against each other as though they had renounced their spines—opera director Sarah Ina Meyers ’02, composer …
Issue: November-December 2018
The Placebo Phenomenon
Two weeks into Ted Kaptchuk ’s first randomized clinical drug trial, nearly a third of his 270 subjects complained of awful side effects. All the patients had joined the study hoping to alleviate severe arm pain: carpal tunnel, tendinitis, chronic pain in …
Issue: January-February 2013
Ashbery Accepts Harvard Arts Medal
Fifty years ago, John Ashbery ’49 was living in Paris and short on cash. He needed money to continue writing poetry, so he took up a job translating cheap detective novels from French into English. One novel meant one month of creation. Ashbery’s work, …