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Harmonic Progression
There are so many places to begin with composer Robert Kyr. Like here: “I grew up in a family where the scars of war were very much with us,” he says. His father had served in the South Pacific in World War II; his uncle had lost a leg in the Italian …
Issue: March-April 2017
A Collage of Colleges
“Why should all of the creative and liberating ideas for liberal education be left to the small residential liberal arts colleges?” That is the question, posed by Plummer professor of Christian morals Peter J. Gomes, with which the curriculum-review …
Issue: January-February 2006
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 …
Off the Shelf
Someone is going to be president; the winner might consult We Wanted Workers: Unraveling the Immigration Narrative , by George J. Borjas, Scrivner professor of economics and social policy (W.W. Norton, $26.95), to concur with or rebut his findings that …
Issue: November-December 2016
Lines of Friendship
Have you ever been to AWP?” Jean Valentine ’56, RI ’68, asks, almost out of the blue. “Oh, it’s wonderful!” This comes toward the end of an interview about the peaks and valleys of a literary career. Hers encompasses 13 books of poetry—the first, Dream …
Issue: November-December 2016
Super Drugs for Super Bugs
Last spring brought alarming reports of the first known case of a germ resistant to colistin, considered an antibiotic of last resort. The bug, a strain of E. coli , was found in a culture taken from a Pennsylvania woman with a urinary tract infection. …
Issue: November-December 2016
Open Roads and Dead Ends on a Native American Reservation
The Seventh Fire opens with an image of a road in the dark, pulling the audience into a harsh and little-seen world: the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota. The documentary’s 71 minutes are largely confined to the town of Pine Point, and its …
Joining the “Long Crimson Line”
A round dozen of Harvard students—the largest contingent since 2010—took their oaths of office, respectively, as second lieutenants in the U.S. Air Force, Army, and Marines or ensigns in the U.S. Navy on Wednesday morning during Commencement week’s annual …
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 …
What Is Critical Race Theory?
Racial-justice activists at Harvard Law School (HLS) won one of the largest public battles over the school’s legacy this month, when the administration agreed to abandon the existing HLS shield. The shield was modeled after the crest of the slaveholding …
Law School Committee Recommends Abandoning Shield Linked to Slavery
AFTER THREE MONTHS of deliberation, a committee of Harvard Law School (HLS) professors, students, and alumni recommended abandoning a controversial shield linked to slavery as the school’s official symbol Friday. HLS’s shield displays the crest of the …
Superbug: An Epidemic Begins
Less than a century ago, the age-old evolutionary relationship between humans and microbes was transformed not by a gene, but by an idea. The antibiotic revolution inaugurated the era of modern medicine, trivializing once-deadly infections and paving the …
Issue: May-June 2014
Measuring Impact in the “Missing Middle”
In an idealized business transaction (ignoring restraints on competition and marketing blandishments), willing shoppers choose the products and services they want, and companies measure their sales, cash flow, profits, and return on capital—financial …
Issue: September-October 2015
Empathy and Imagination
Only the Animals , by Ceridwen Dovey ’03, is a beautifully wrought, disconcerting collection of stories told by the souls of dead animals. A cat is picked off by a sniper on the Western Front; a blue mussel drowns in Pearl Harbor; a courageous tortoise is …
Issue: September-October 2015
Loker Lunch
Loker Commons, Harvard's new student-center-cum-food-court, spreads out in the reclaimed basement of Memorial Hall. Descend through the new brick and granite entry facing the Science Center and start taking in the motif: utilitarian gray beams, ceiling, …