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A Love Affair with Haiti
It was probably Graham Greene’s The Comedians that sealed the fate of Amy Wilentz ’76. Set in midcentury Haiti, the 1966 novel paints a scorching portrait of the dictatorial regime of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his secret police, the Tonton …
Issue: January-February 2015
“A Profession Based on Honor and Trust”
In the past decade, President Drew Faust has honored 74 Harvard students as they took their oaths of office during Commencement week’s annual Reserve Officers’ Training Corps commissioning ceremony—six of them on Wednesday morning, in the last such …
A Progress Report on Faculty Diversity
Just last year, the statistics department hired its first tenured female professor, Susan Murphy. Lauren Williams ’00 will join the math department next fall, the second tenured woman in that department’s history. Their hires reflect Harvard’s growing …
Near Misses
They each had their shot. After a season that yielded some strong wins but also unfortunate losses for the men’s and women’s basketball teams, both came up just short of reaching the NCAA tournament. For the men, the shot at the NCAAs was literal: with …
Issue: May-June 2018
Gender and the Academy
The April 6 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education ’s opinion section, The Chronicle Review , is devoted entirely to the theme of “The Awakening: Women and Power in the Academy,” featuring essay responses from women academics on that theme. Here …
Jimmy Carter and James Agee ’32
When he was running for president in 1976, Jimmy Carter was asked to name his favorite book. He said, “strangely enough,” it was Let Us Now Praise Famous Men , with text by James Agee ’32, and photographs by Walker Evans, published in 1941 when Carter was …
Redefining Obesity
Alarmingly, the rate of obesity in the United States has tripled during the past six decades: according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 42 percent of American adults are obese. Globally, more than a billion people live with the …
Issue: July-August 2024
The Pleasure of Noticing
At the Harvard Film Archive , the staff called it V-Day: the date of Agnès Varda’s arrival in Cambridge, for appearances at screenings of Faces, Places (2017) and Vagabond (1985), and for her 2018 Norton Lectures on Cinema the next week. When the French …
A Championship Tune-up
After going 5-10 in non-conference play, the Harvard men’s basketball team appeared a long shot to win the Ivy League championship. Not anymore. Harvard defeated Cornell 98-88 in double overtime on Friday and throttled Columbia 93-74 on Saturday, avenging …
Steering Softball
Head softball coach Jenny Allard, who has led Harvard’s team for more than half of its existence and ranks among the Ivy League’s most successful coaches, doesn’t want this to be a story about her. “Write about the team,” she says. “Write about what …
Issue: March-April 2018
Vogue Meets Veritas
Though the early April night is freezing cold at 10 p.m., a line of 600 people, mostly students, waits more than 40 minutes to enter Annenberg Hall. They are another sellout audience for the annual Identities fashion show at Harvard. Four thousand more …
Issue: January-February 2013
Off the Shelf
Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces: Diversity and Free Expression in Education, by John Palfrey ’94, J.D. ’01 (MIT, $19.95). The author, previously Harvard Law’s vice dean for library and information resources, now head of Phillips Academy, Andover, plunges into …
Issue: January-February 2018
Personal Information in the Digital Age
Do people behave differently when they think they are being watched? When former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed the mass surveillance of American citizens in June 2013, the question suddenly grew in importance. Can the …
Issue: January-February 2017
Harvard Endowment Rises $4.4 Billion to $32 Billion
Highlights: Endowment valued at $32 billion as of June 30, up $4.4 billion (16 percent) from $27.6 billion a year earlier. Harvard Management Company records 21.4 percent investment return on endowment assets during fiscal year 2011. All asset categories …
The Paintings Behind the Books in the Harvard Botanical Museum
When Richard Evans Schultes ’37, Ph.D. ’41 became director of the Botanical Museum of Harvard University in 1967, he could not have imagined that he would soon discover a collection of beautiful paintings hidden behind a shelf of books in the …