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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 …
Making Art behind Bars
“We are not the exception to the norm—we are actually the norm,” said formerly incarcerated artist Jesse Krimes during a panel discussion at the Harvard Art Museums March 22 that followed the screening of a documentary about his life and work. “There are …
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 …
What You Can Say, Singing
Here is everything that happened before the audience at the Bavarian State Opera heard soprano Liv Redpath ’14 sing the final note of Der Rosenkavalier on opening night in May 2022. After she was cast, Redpath first studied the German libretto to …
Issue: November-December 2024
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 …
Tobacco Smoke and Tuberculosis
Smoking is one of the largest risk factors for contracting or dying from tuberculosis (TB), and in a study published today , Harvard researchers described a mechanism that may finally explain why. They also identified two types of existing drugs that may …
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 . …