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Harvard Credit for High-Schoolers
“This is a story about kids succeeding, about the success of an experiment,” says Cabot professor of American literature Elisa New, describing the online poetry course she taught last fall to an unusual set of enrollees: eleventh- and twelfth-graders from …
Issue: March-April 2020
Talented Eccentrics
Within living memory, computer programming was handicraft. Individual programmers strained to create works that were both useful and beautiful—the two virtues went together. In 1984, Steven Levy’s book Hackers thrillingly documented this heroic age of …
Issue: March-April 2007
Sweeping Change for Science
The University Planning Committee for Science and Engineering released on July 14 a preliminary report outlining a comprehensive and sweeping strategy to strengthen science at Harvard. Among the highlights, the 97-page report ( PDF ) calls for up to 140 …
Issue: September-October 2006
Harvard Graduate School Honors Daniel Aaron, Nancy Hopkins, and Others
The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Centennial Medal, first awarded in 1989 on the occasion of the school’s hundredth anniversary, honors alumni who have made notable contributions to society that emerged from their graduate study at Harvard. It is …
Is Nuclear Power Scalable?
Heinz professor of environmental policy John Holdren, who holds a joint appointment in the Faculty of Arts and Science’s department of earth and planetary sciences, counts himself among the environmentalists who believe a contribution from the expansion …
Issue: May-June 2006
Serving on the Corporation
D. Ronald Daniel : While the bylaws do not set any limits with respect to time or age, within the last 10 years the Corporation itself has more or less agreed that 10 years or age 72, depending on when somebody arrives at the Corporation, would be the …
Issue: May-June 2006
The Black…and the Red
H arvard achieved its sixth consecutive budget surplus—some $298 million, up from $196 million in the prior year—according to the University’s annual financial report for the fiscal period ended June 30, 2019, published in late October. The surpluses …
Issue: January-February 2020
Parenting Digital Kids
When U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy ’98 got his first cell phone in 2001, the ability to make calls anytime, anywhere gave him a “feeling of freedom.” Then he bought a headset. When calling someone no longer required him to hold the phone up to his …
Preparing for the Energy Transition
Roughly 1.7 million workers are likely to lose their jobs as the United States moves away from fossil fuels and toward wind, solar, hydropower, and other renewable energy sources, says Wertheim professor in urban policy Gordon Hanson. The Harvard …
Issue: November-December 2023
Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?
The title of Alexander Keyssar’s new book— Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? —is also, he says, the question Americans ask themselves every four years. The Stirling professor of history and social policy at the Harvard Kennedy School recently …
News from the HAA
Alumni Abroad As classes resumed in Cambridge, alumni on both sides of the Atlantic were gearing up for the "Harvard in Europe" conference in London. The event, to be held November 14 and 15, is part of the Harvard Alumni Association's Global Series. …
Issue: November-December 2003
Off the Shelf
Democracy and Imperialism: Irving Babbitt and Warlike Democracies, by William S. Smith (University of Michigan, $70). Harvard, widely known as a liberal bastion, was not always and is not only so. Smith, managing director of Catholic University’s Center …
Issue: November-December 2019
The Dark Side of Daylight Saving
Karin Johnson ’99 was paying close attention earlier this month when the U.S. Senate voted on the Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight saving time permanent starting next year. When senators approved the bill—to the cheers of many Americans …
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
50 Years of Social Studies
In 1960, the idea that Harvard undergraduates could concentrate in a field that pulled together economics, political science, sociology, history, and philosophy, instead of choosing just one of those disciplines, was revolutionary. Social studies …