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Loneliness—Bad for Body and Mind
Few people would consider loneliness a positive condition. Many come to know its unfortunate mental toll at some time or other during the course of their lives—but medicine is increasingly recognizing the physical toll it takes, too, especially when it …
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
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 …
Hansjörg Wyss Boosts Bioengineering Innovation
The University announced today a gift of $131 million from Hansjörg Wyss, M.B.A. ’65, to support the operations of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. This is the third such gift that the Swiss-born entrepreneur has made to the …
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
Keeping Them Close
The ambulance rolls onto a treeless street in Boston, stopping at a triple-decker across from a defunct bar and an asphalt lot. The medical team greets Crystal, exiting the house with her son in a baby carrier, and helps them inside the tight, cozy space. …
Issue: May-June 2021
A Revised Gen Ed Debuts
After a years-long redesign , a reformed version of the College’s program in General Education launches this fall. The new Gen Ed intends to focus on “urgent problems and pressing questions”—to equip students for life outside of the classroom more …
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
David Cutler: Can the U.S. Healthcare System Be Fixed?
No country in the world spends more on health care than the United States, or has less to show for it when compared to other wealthy nations. The U.S. spends nearly 50 percent more per capita than Switzerland, the second biggest spender among wealthy …
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
Brevia
Nameless No More The New College Theatre , a focal point for undergraduate productions—created from 2005 to 2007 by new construction behind, and a renovation of the façade of, the Hasty Pudding Theatricals venue—has become Farkas Hall . Andrew L. Farkas …
Issue: January-February 2012
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