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“The Genius of the Balafon”
In West Africa, Neba Solo, born Souleymane Traoré in 1969, is often called “the genius of the balafon,” says Ingrid T. Monson. So skilled a player, composer of songs, singer, and innovator is he that in 2002 his homeland, Mali, named him a chevalier de …
Issue: January-February 2006
Renewed, and New
T he university is now clearly embarked on an historic spurt of physical growth and transformation. Even before a shovel of earth is turned in Allston, where enormous campus expansion is envisioned, work just completed, under way, or about to start in …
Issue: May-June 2005
Jambalaya
Harvest's main dining room. The outdoor terrace can be a pleasant alternative. Photograph courtesy of Harvest Restaurant The landmark Harvest R estaurant, established in 1975 and reopened in 1998 by new management after a financial swoon, is at last in …
Issue: May-June 2002
“An Extraordinarily Painful and Disorienting Time for Harvard”
In an email message to the community, Alan M. Garber, who became interim president a week ago upon the resignation of President Claudine Gay , began by acknowledging “an extraordinarily painful and disorienting time” for the University. Since arriving as …
Talking About Tipping Points
While climate change is frequently discussed as a problem of gradual warming, numerous features in the global climate system are thought to be at risk of flipping suddenly from one stable state to another. Scientists worry that a few of these tipping …
Football: Princeton 51, Harvard 48
Harvard Stadium was in twilight when Saturday’s triple-overtime tie-breaker came to its crushing end, on a scoring pass from Princeton quarterback Quinn Epperly to Roman Wilson. Sound familiar? At Princeton Stadium a year ago, a scoring pass from Epperly …
A Student in Beijing
Thousands of bicycles. Ubiquitous laundry lines. Hard beds and squat toilets. Metal meal tins. White bureaucratic slips of paper with red stamps--all assaulted by dust from the Gobi desert and a coal-induced haze. Many Western students go into culture …
Cambridge 02138
Harvard continues to be an acute embarrassment to me, but unfortunately not to itself. It will take my beloved College 20 years to overcome the damage it has done in running Summers off. What were you thinking of, you at the FAS? That only you can define …
Issue: May-June 2006
Sandeep Robert Datta and Venkatesh Murthy: Why is Smell Such a Mystery to Scientists?
WHY IS SMELL SUCH A MYSTERY TO SCIENTISTS? Neurobiologists Venkatesh Murthy and Sandeep Robert Datta discuss what scientists know about our sense of smell, and what big mysteries remain. Topics include smell loss from COVID-19, experimental …
“Fully Part of the Harvard Family”
The new First Generation Harvard Shared Interest Group (SIG) is “the natural outcome of Harvard’s very laudable HFAI [ Harvard Financial Aid Initiative ] program,” notes Kevin Jennings ’85, who founded the SIG and is launching an alumni-mentoring program …
Issue: September-October 2012
Wanderers from Sirius
Dogs do figure mightily in Underdog, the fourth collection of poems by Katrina Roberts ’87. In “Cave Canem,” for example, a meditation on, and reimagining of, the volcanic denouement that doomed Pompeii, the narrator speaks of …my quiet urgings to the …
Issue: January-February 2012
Football: Harvard 56, Princeton 39
This was one for the books. On a perfect football Saturday at the Stadium, Harvard held a 42-16 lead in the second half and seemed to be cruising to its fifth win of the season. Then, within a span of 10 minutes, a furious Princeton rally cut the Crimson …
Lessons from Libya?
In the spring of 2007, this magazine published a brief news item observing that “Lawrence University Professor Michael Porter, perhaps the world’s preeminent corporate strategist, is advising the government of Libya on economic reform,” that the …
Issue: July-August 2011
President Bacow‘s Alumni Day Speech
(Speech published as prepared for delivery) Thank you, Vanessa [Liu], for that generous introduction—and for your steadfast leadership of the Harvard Alumni Association. We appreciate all you have done this year to keep our community as strong as …
Helping Hands
“I got punched in the head an hour ago,” says Victor A. Lopez-Carmen, M.D. ’24 (known as Waokiya Mani in the Dakota language and Machil in the Yaqui language). “I knew it was going to happen at some point, and today was the first day I got rocked.” He’s …
Issue: May-June 2023