Search
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 …
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
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 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 …
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 …
A Garden of Prose
The 2,000-square-foot vegetable plot—planted with fava beans, peas, arugula, raspberries, even artichokes—that author Francine Prose ’68, A.M. ’69, cultivates at her upstate New York home has become, she says, “an obsession. Sometimes I think I write for …
Issue: September-October 2010
Activist Administrator
The executive vice president’s website defines the post, neutrally, as the University’s “principal ranking officer…on business and organizational matters.” But Katie Lapp’s self-definition continues in a more action-oriented tone, describing her …
Issue: September-October 2010
Near and Distant Objectives
The opening words of Noah Feldman’s latest book, The Arab Winter, are in Arabic: Al-sha‘b Yurid Isqat al-nizam! The people Want The overthrow of the regime! As he explains in his first sentence, “These words, chanted rhythmically all over the …
Issue: September-October 2020
“Twenty Questions” with William Deresiewicz
On Monday night, a chattering crowd packed Paine Hall to watch William Deresiewicz, author of the controversial new book Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life, address his complaints about the Ivy League. …
“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
Robin Kelsey: Is a Photograph a Work of Art?
What makes a photograph art ? A great photograph may be the result of skill and intention, or it may be the result of dumb luck: a fleeting, perfect composition captured by chance. At a time when there is a camera in every pocket, how do curators …
The Harvard Center for Gastrophysics?
Surprise is Ferran Adrià’s stock in trade. He delights the diners at elBulli, his restaurant near Barcelona, with creations such as gelatin served hot; a “bubble tea” drink in which the liquid tastes of prosciutto and the bubbles of melon; and …
Issue: March-April 2009