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News Briefs: Important University Updates
Quantum Quest As befits its subject, the Ph.D. program in quantum science and engineering approved by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on April 6 is a small part of a much larger universe of Harvard commitment to a burgeoning new field: the rare, large …
Issue: July-August 2021
“A Moment of Absolute Moral Clarity”
About perhaps no other public issue does President Drew Faust feel more passionately—nor express herself more personally—than America’s history and continuing legacy of racial division. In the spring of 2003, when she was dean of the Radcliffe Institute, …
An Arts Advance
President Drew Faust and Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) dean Michael D. Smith have announced a central-administration-funded initiative to develop an undergraduate concentration in theater, dance, and media. The proposal must undergo the formal review …
Rooks and Reverse Layups
Chess was the game Ed Saunders, father of Wesley Saunders ’15, recommended to his son and played with him: chess, the father said, would teach young Wes to think a few steps ahead. Apparently it worked, and not just with pawns and bishops. Last spring, in …
Issue: November-December 2014
Harvesting History
Walking through Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, William W. Sellers ’90 stops at the brick guard house where abolitionist John Brown was captured in 1859. Brown had raided the federal armory there, intending to arm local slaves and lead an insurrection. He …
Issue: May-June 2018
Values and Voting Patterns
In an era of growing political polarization, new research moves beyond typical economic explanations, such as the loss of blue-collar manufacturing jobs, to offer a fresh take on how people make choices in the voting booth. Associate professor of …
Issue: January-February 2024
“Chorus of Soloists”
Recent months have brought so many reasons to worry about China’s rise: rapidly expanding military capabilities, an increasingly assertive foreign policy, deepening tensions with regional neighbors, and a new leadership that as one of its first acts …
Issue: July-August 2014
University People
Scholars at the Summit Photograph by Aynsley Ford Vamsi K. Mootha Photograph by Kris Snibbe/HPAC Jeff W. Lichtman Photograph by Kris Snibbe/HPAC Andrew W. Murray The National Academy of Sciences has elected 11 professors to membership. From Harvard …
Issue: July-August 2014
The End of the “Course”?
On April Fools’ Day in 2009, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) announced the end of printed versions of its iconic Courses of Instruction catalog, along with the undergraduate and graduate student handbooks, the Q Guide, and the faculty-instruction …
Transitions Gradual and Cataclysmic
Earth, with its mountains and rivers, forests and grasslands, oceans and marshes, is home to an extraordinary range of life. It is also the source of the food—and air—that sustain humanity, and of the natural resources—coal and oil, gold and diamonds—that …
Issue: May-June 2021
Fiscal Portrait
The University’s annual financial report for fiscal year 2013 (ended last June 30), published in November ( download PDF ), reveals a nearly 5 percent growth in operating revenue, to just more than $4.21 billion; a greater increase in expenses—up 6 …
Issue: January-February 2014
Football: Harvard 41, Holy Cross 35
Waking up on the morning after, players and fans on both sides might have wondered if they’d dreamed it. With just over three minutes to play, Harvard had driven 84 yards to tie Holy Cross, 21-21, and force an overtime tiebreaker. After two overtime …
Navigating Changing Careers
To find an era of upheaval in the nature of work comparable to the scale and impact of that underway now, professor of management practice Joe Fuller looks all the way back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. “What did [industrialization] …
A Fever for Chèvre
For Max Sandvoss ’02 and his brother, Trystan, the chores associated with making small-batch artisanal cheese typically begin before dawn and, during western New York’s cold, snowy winters, end well after dark. Their First Light Farm and Creamery in East …
Issue: September-October 2013
In Defense of Liberal Arts
I didn’t fully realize the value of a liberal arts education until I was removed from it. Though even as a high schooler I knew that I wanted to go to a “liberal arts school,” that was mostly because I didn’t yet know what I wanted to do with my life. I’d …
Issue: September-October 2023