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To Russia, with Gloves
The Harvard pipeline to the Winter Olympics this February goes straight through Bedford, Massachusetts. That’s where the U.S. women’s national hockey team set up its training facility: 25 athletes, including five who have played at Harvard, took up …
Issue: January-February 2014
“If You Believe That It Is Possible to Break, Believe That It Is Possible to Repair”
T his year’s Harvard Law School Class Day had many firsts: Roberta “Robbie” Kaplan ’88 was the first openly gay person to speak at the occasion, addressing the school’s first majority-woman graduating class, whose members had performed a record-breaking …
AI and Democracy
History will look back on 2024 as the first AI election, said Shorenstein Center director Nancy Gibbs in her introduction to the event, “ AI and its Implications for Democracy.” That sense of the historical moment pervaded the ensuing conversation among …
Divest Harvard Makes Case for Dropping Fossil Fuels
A group of University community members—faculty, alumni, and the student group Divest Harvard—urged the University to divest its endowment from fossil fuels at a press conference in the Charles Hotel yesterday. The event marked the start of this year’s …
Long Innings
Action in cricket , as in baseball, starts with a ball thrown to a batter. But in cricket, everything else happens faster: the bowler—cricket’s version of a pitcher—gets a running start, and even in recreational games the ball often heads toward the …
Issue: July-August 2013
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
Own Goals
Harvard had enough problems last academic year without making matters worse for itself. Yet after handling the pro-Palestinian encampment in the Old Yard from April 24 to May 14 reasonably well (the locked gates isolated the protest, and after some talks …
Issue: September-October 2024
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
Among the Brokenhearted
Matthew Ichihashi Potts looks forward to brewing his signature pour-over coffee every morning. It’s a meditative moment—beans become grounds, still water boils, and the two steep together for precisely three minutes. It’s his morning routine, but now, as …
Issue: May-June 2023
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
Mysterious Minis
Two miniature mosaics, each the size of a Kindle and shrouded in mystery, depict 41 male figures. Researchers at Dumbarton Oaks, where the mosaics are part of the Byzantine collection, know roughly when they were made (the early fourteenth century) and …
Issue: March-April 2024
Peacemakers
If there is going to be a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," says Robert H. Mnookin, "the rough outlines of what the deal might be are not terribly difficult to sketch out. A number of people in recent years have done this." He …
Issue: March-April 2004
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