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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 …
The Science of Hurt
The Reverend Stephen Fulton falls a lot. Once he toppled into a freezer case at the grocery store. He has difficulty walking, and he can’t sit or stand for long periods. He can’t garden anymore, and had to retire early from his regular pastoral duties …
Issue: November-December 2005
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 …
“From Neither Here Nor There”
The penultimate chapter of sociologist Roberto Gonzales’s book Lives in Limbo —the chapter he calls the most painful and gripping to read, the one that would be its climax, if the book were a work of fiction—opens with a story about two factory workers on …
Issue: July-August 2020
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 …
Focus on Faust
The memories may be fading, but Harvard roared into the new millennium. In the wake of the $2.6-billion University Campaign, Neil L. Rudenstine bequeathed to his successor a $165-million surplus—a huge cushion in an annual budget then totaling $2.1 …
Issue: July-August 2018
Critique and Joy
It was not until 1855 —the same year an unknown poet named Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass —that a once-famous Black poet, Phillis Wheatley, finally appeared in print in the United States. An international sensation when her 1773 collection Poems …
Issue: September-October 2021
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
Harvard’s Slave Connections
Although it has not been a secret, Harvard’s past connections to slavery are hardly well known. The student-inspired Harvard and Slavery Project , dating to 2007, sought to examine those connections. During four semesters of inquiry, according to Bell …
“The Risk of Inaction”
Are you a “Steady Eddy,” “Twin Peaker,” or a “Night Owl”? A software company called Opower has identified what times of the day a large swath of American households typically use the most electricity—and is helping consumers change their usage in order to …
Issue: May-June 2015
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 …
“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
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
Capital Planning Chief Appointed
The University announced today that its search for a vice president for capital planning and project management (a new senior administrative post intended to unify those functions across the Cambridge campus, the Longwood Medical Area, and Harvard's …