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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
Tackling Football Trauma
A crushed nose , a snapped collarbone, a finger jabbed in an eye that drew blood: these were the minor injuries sustained at 1894’s brutal rendition of the Harvard-Yale football game. One tackle took a blow to the head so hard, his teammates had to point …
Issue: July-August 2015
Brevia
Gender Milestone For the first time, slightly more women than men will enroll in the cohort of students entering Harvard College, making the class of 2008 an historic group even before they begin their studies. Although the official final count awaits the …
Issue: September-October 2004
“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
The “Little Object That Speaks Loudly”
Broken wine bottles, clay tobacco pipes, and fancy baubles—including, most recently, a pair of silver-alloy cufflinks: these are the small pieces of life at early Harvard that archaeologists have dug up during the last decade. Though archival accounts …
On Your Honor
When the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) voted last May to adopt an undergraduate honor code , in the wake of the largest recent case of student misconduct on an examination , debate swirled around implementation: how, exactly, students would affirm …
“Decarcerating” America
As she assumes her new role as organizing fellow for Harvard Law School’s new Institute to End Mass Incarceration (IEMI), community organizer Brittany White finds herself thinking of Bianca. She met her in 2009, when both women were serving prison …
Issue: November-December 2021
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 …
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
Gift Funds Neuroscience Research into Medical Marijuana
McLean Hospital, the largest psychiatric affiliate of Harvard Medical School, has received a $500,000 gift that funds their new Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery (MIND) Program. The donation, announced on October 6, comes from …
Cinema with Gravitas
It was not much of a house at all: just a simple shack, with a dirt floor and ramshackle walls. But its owner, a Haitian sugarcane worker in the Dominican Republic, graciously let in the strangers who’d knocked at his door, offering them respite from the …
Issue: September-October 2014
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 …
Music and Medicine
When Toussaint Miller ’25 arrived at Harvard, he figured he was done with music. He’d loved playing trumpet in his high school jazz band, but now it was time to focus on his books. He wanted to go to medical school, maybe become a surgeon. “I was like, …
Issue: March-April 2025
Teen Grind Culture
Like it or not, children and teenagers today are live participants in an unprecedented experiment, as the sudden ubiquity of smartphones and hyper-engaging social media influences their development. Parents and educators who are not as digitally savvy …
Issue: March-April 2025
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