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Joseph Conrad’s Crystal Ball
Many call Rudyard Kipling the scribe of the British Empire, but novelist Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) may have best rendered its waning years and foreshadowed its demise. Around the turn of the last century, Conrad’s books portrayed terrorism in Europe, …
Issue: May-June 2014
A Gendered Schedule
As the Princeton men’s basketball team pulled away from Penn in overtime of the Ivy League tournament semifinals last March, a Tigers supporter paced just outside the team’s locker room, loudly willing the clock down to zero “Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.” His …
Reading the Tea Leaves
Commencements provide annual practice in uniting the Harvard community and celebrating its members, performing rituals, and parading around in funny costumes. Installations may appear similar, but are relatively infrequent (Claudine Gay’s, on September …
Issue: September-October 2023
A Rudenstine Retrospective
Only 10 years ago, at the end of the 1990-1991 academic year, Harvard and the higher-education universe were very far from their current robust prosperity. The annual financial statements showed a $42-million deficit--$5 million worse than in the prior …
Radical Reviewing
In 1979 , a voice on the radio attracted the attention of George Scialabba ’69. It was “gentle and earnest, logical, persuasive, politically astute,” he recalls. “I was surprised to hear it was Noam Chomsky, whom I knew only as a linguist.” Scialabba ( …
Issue: November-December 2013
Finding Voices
Marilyn Booth ’77 is one of the world’s most prolific translators of Arabic fiction into English. For nearly four decades, she has collaborated with writers from across the Arabic-speaking world to introduce dozens of literary works from cultures that …
Issue: May-June 2021
New EPA Administrator Gives Inaugural Speech at Harvard Law School
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy affirmed the Obama administration’s commitment to fighting climate change in her first public address since assuming her new role. Her spirited remarks, delivered Tuesday at Harvard Law …
Football: Harvard 35, Bucknell 7
Three defenders converged on Kyle Juszczyk at midfield as he brought down a pass from quarterback Colton Chapple. But bringing down Juszczyk is like halting a runaway train. The senior tight end broke free, stiff-armed one more would-be tackler at the …
Alternatives to Policing
Amid the protests last summer that followed George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police, three Boston City Council members proposed an ordinance to divert nonviolent 911 calls away from the Boston Police Department. Those calls—often involving …
Football: Harvard 52, Holy Cross 3
If college football had a mercy rule, Friday night’s game at the Stadium would have been called at halftime. In a driving rainstorm, Harvard scored on all of its first-half possessions and led Holy Cross, 49-3, at the close of the second quarter. Senior …
The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang
In the summer of 1895 , in the Indian Territory that became Oklahoma, a ragtag gang of five teenaged boys—all black, Native American, or of mixed race—went on a vicious two-week spree of robbery, rape, and murder. The apparently random violence terrified …
Issue: March-April 2012
The Human Genome Map, 10 Years Later
In the decade since the first mapping of a human genome in its entirety, the pace of discovery enabled by this new technology has, in different ways, both exceeded and fallen short of expectations, professor of systems biology Eric Lander said at a …
Where the Women Are—and Aren’t
Women now hold 27 percent of the assistant, associate, and full professorships in Harvard’s faculties--a new high. And 22 percent of tenured (full) professors are female--also a new high, up about one percentage point each two academic years from 18 …
Issue: January-February 2011
“Magical Digressions”
Remember that Seinfeld episode where Kramer was collecting skeletons and refurbishing them to museum quality by washing the bones in Jerry’s dishwasher so he could sell them off? No? Maybe that’s because it never happened. Television writer, director, and …
Issue: January-February 2021
The Shows Go On
Tune into WHRB, Harvard’s student-run radio station, just after midnight on a Sunday and you’ll hear the thumping bass of hip-hop, the staccato pulses of rap, and the soulful cadences of R&B. These beats, part of WHRB’s black music department, The Darker …
Issue: January-February 2021