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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
Harvard’s Stake in the Fisher v. Texas Affirmative Action Case
Relieving fears at Harvard and elsewhere that it might strike down the use of race in admissions, the U.S. Supreme Court today upheld the University of Texas (UT) at Austin’s affirmative action program in the case Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin . …
Steven Spielberg and Drew Faust Address Harvard Commencement
Seats in the shade were in high demand in Tercentenary Theatre on the afternoon of the 365th Commencement Day. Graduates, trailing well-coiffed relatives, wandered the sea of off-white folding chairs, looking hopeful, then grim, then disconsolate. The …
“When You Hear These Lectures, They're All Me”
“These lectures are hard for me,” Toni Morrison, Litt.D. ’89, told her Sanders Theatre audience at her penultimate Norton Lecture . Years ago when she gave the Tanner Lectures at Harvard, she explained, the persistent questions from her literature …
An “Older Sister” to Combat Anemia
It looks like the kind of applesauce squeeze bottle one would find in a child’s lunch box. Twist the top off Kiikter’s cheerful pastel pouch (complete with a rhinoceros mascot), take a sip, and consider the contents: the texture of Jello shortly after …
Issue: November-December 2023
Programmed for Success?
In December 1978 , former Harvard men’s basketball player Thomas Mannix ’81 recalls, the team arrived in Hawaii for the Rainbow Classic amid a year of transition. That season, Ivy League freshmen had become eligible to play varsity basketball, and an …
Should AI Be Scaled Down?
A driving force of the competition between AI companies is the belief that bigger is better. GPT-4, the model that powers the most advanced version of ChatGPT, contains an estimated 1.8 trillion parameters, or variables that determine how it responds to …
Lost in Ideas
When an idea keeps him up at night—nudges him awake to lie there, eyes wide and mind working—that’s when television writer and producer Carlton Cuse ’81 knows it’s good. An epidemic of vampirism in New York City that, chillingly, sends the infected …
Issue: January-February 2016
Finishing with a Flourish
It’s the 135th playing of The Game, Fenway Park, midway through the third quarter. Yale has scored 10 unanswered points to take the lead for the first time, 24-21. Nevertheless, the Harvard sideline exudes confidence. “There was no ‘woe-is-me,’” Crimson …
Issue: January-February 2019
A Case For Women
When Nitin Nohria became Harvard Business School (HBS) dean in mid 2010, he detailed five priorities, ranging from innovation in education and internationalization to inclusion. In setting out the latter goal, he said in a recent conversation, he aimed …
Issue: September-October 2015
Surgery for All
“Global health” typically brings to mind issues such as vaccination, maternal care, sanitation, and malaria control. It’s not usually associated with surgery. But consider the woman who dies in childbirth because she can’t reach a clinic that performs …
Issue: July-August 2015
The Power of Plants
Often overlooked, plants are arguably the most indispensable inhabitants of the planet. They absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen that supports life. They provide basic human necessities, including food, clothing, and shelter. And in communion with …
“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