Search
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 …
Toward Cultural Citizenship
One day in the early spring of 2013, Alexander Rehding asked the students in his graduate seminar to join him in experiencing the sound of silence. As he led them through an exercise in deep listening, the students sat quietly for 15 minutes, becoming …
Issue: May-June 2014
100 Years of HSPH
Courtesy of the Harvard School of Public Health Julio Frenk The launch of the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) capital campaign coincides with the school’s centennial celebration. Since opening in September 1913 as the Harvard-MIT School for Health …
Reforming International Finance
Addressing global crises —pandemics, financial collapses, climate change—requires global cooperation. But international institutions that were created to support geopolitical and economic stability, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World …
Issue: November-December 2023
Outdoor Smorgasbord
If your gustatory expectations are low, try Au Bon Pain for an outdoor lunch with sideshow. Taking up lots of Forbes Plaza, on the Massachusetts Avenue side of Holyoke Center, its tables afford a peerless vantage point on the Square and its folk. Sidewalk …
Strengths—and Warning Signs
For the fourth consecutive year, Harvard has reported a financial surplus—and its largest to date: $114 million for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2017. And for at least the fourth consecutive year, the University’s senior financial officers have …
Issue: January-February 2018
A New Cast for the Semitic Museum
“Fun with goo!” chirped Peter Der Manuelian, director of the Harvard Semitic Museum , observing the activity in its third-floor gallery. Kneeling on the floor, three student volunteers in protective coats and blue latex gloves smeared a grainy, …
A Diagnosis for American Health Care
Last Friday afternoon, as Republican senators began pushing toward a last-ditch vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and as Senator Bernie Sanders was making news with his proposed “Medicare for All” bill, a dozen health-care experts gathered at …
Off the Shelf
What Does a Black Hole Look Like? by Charles D. Bailyn, Ph.D. ’87, JF ’90 (Princeton, $34). The Giamatti professor of astronomy and physics at Yale (and inaugural dean of faculty at Yale-NUS College in Singapore) steers a middle course in explaining the …
Issue: January-February 2015
“How War Has Made Us”
President Drew Faust has often described how the battle to achieve civil rights for African Americans shaped her worldview, from her youthful exposure to the upheaval over school desegregation in Virginia to her college involvement in the catalytic …
Harvard College’s Cross-Charles Classes
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) is nearing a vote that will transform, and standardize, scheduling of classes. The motion presented to the faculty at its meeting today, for discussion and a vote later this semester, brings to fruition work begun in …
A New Portrait of “Jackie”
It might be impossible to make original art about the Kennedys. A writer could be intimidated by the speculative accounts of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination as penned by Norman Mailer, Don DeLillo, and Stephen King. A movie director may feel …
“Getting Out of the Way of the Work”
There’s a line out the Cooper Gallery’s doors, wrapping back around Peet’s. We’re queuing between those old-style red-velvet aisle markers, printed tickets in hand. When we finally make it inside, they make it worth our while: I sample some kind of …
Dining-hall Workers’ Strike Begins
Streams of dining-hall workers , students, and supporters gathered in the Yard this morning as Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) commenced a long-threatened strike . Workers have set up pickets outside undergraduate dining halls, planning to …
A Moral Conscience for Economics
Much of the public is interested in fixing America’s gaping level of wealth inequality, but few people feel responsible for paying for it. The new dean of the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), Douglas Elmendorf, makes no secret of where the money should come …
Issue: September-October 2016