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Democracy Requests the Pleasure of Your Company
The day before she cast two tiebreaker votes in the Senate in early February, Vice President Kamala Harris brought chocolates for senators on both sides of the aisle and then huddled with a few senior members around a fire in her office. The gestures were …
Issue: May-June 2021
Engineering Equity
The reports of the Task Force on Women Faculty (WF) and the Task Force on Women in Science and Engineering (WISE), released on May 16, share a common introduction: “In spite of more than three decades of concern, Harvard has made only limited progress in …
Issue: July-August 2005
David Hemenway: Who Can Solve America’s Gun Problem?
Mass murders committed with firearms are becoming more frequent in the United States. And the total number of gun deaths, a majority by suicide, is now on par with those caused by automobile accidents. None of this has broken the political gridlock …
Medicare Solutions and Problems
The addition of prescription-drug coverage to Medicare is the first substantial expansion of benefits since the program was enacted nearly 40 years ago. Here I examine this new benefit through the eyes of Medicare beneficiaries and then through the eyes …
Issue: May-June 2004
The Prankster’s Secret
Thayer. 2 a.m. Six freshmen, clad in muted grays, stocking-caps, and ski-masks, review, for the umpteenth time, their plot. Lock-pick kit? Check. Map? Check. Camera? Frantically, one of the conspirators searches his seemingly countless overcoat pockets. …
Issue: March-April 2004
Recruiting vs. Rights
The weeks leading up to Thanksgiving were especially busy for Harvard bloggers. Robert John Bennett '68, who's writing a novel on-line, posted chapters 4 through 12 of Part V ("Harvard—The Fourth Year") on his blog—short for Weblog, or on-line …
Issue: January-February 2004
Creating Community, On-line and Off
The weeks leading up to Thanksgiving were especially busy for Harvard bloggers. Robert John Bennett '68, who's writing a novel on-line, posted chapters 4 through 12 of Part V ("Harvard—The Fourth Year") on his blog—short for Weblog, or on-line …
Issue: January-February 2004
The Deficit Danger
At the time of the last presidential election campaign, four years ago, the government was running a sizable budget surplus. That surplus, then-Governor Bush argued, belonged to the taxpayers, and they should get it back. When critics objected that a tax …
Issue: January-February 2004
The Physician-Poet
The moment that Rafael Campo, M.D. ’92, still thinks about every day—when he enters an exam room where a patient is waiting, or sits at his desk to write a poem—came at the end of what had been the longest, hardest year of his life. These days he has a …
Issue: May-June 2019
Harvard’s Nobel Prize Incubator
A striking phenomenon in the biomedical sciences is that great scientists sometimes arise in clusters at a particular time and place that fosters outstanding scientific achievement. Certain institutions, indeed certain places within institutions, succeed …
Brevia
Photograph by Kris Snibbe/Harvard News Office Lizabeth Cohen Radcliffe’s Changing Roster Radcliffe Institute dean Barbara J. Grosz, who assumed the position on an acting basis in 2007 and became dean the following year, announced in mid April that she …
Issue: July-August 2011
The Sports Critic
Louisa Thomas ’04 is at her best in transit. Her finest work develops not when she sits down to write, but on her run directly before. That’s when she plots a story in her head, teasing out disparate threads and weaving them into a cohesive narrative. …
Issue: November-December 2020
Targeting Cancer
Linnea Olson tells her story—of repeatedly facing death, then being saved by the latest precision therapy—articulately and thoughtfully, agreeing to discuss subjects that might otherwise be too personal, she says, because it could benefit other patients. …
Issue: May-June 2018
Could College Be Free?
G etting ahead— or getting by—is increasingly difficult in the United States without a college degree. The demand for college education is at an all-time high, but so is the price tag. David Deming—professor of public policy at the Kennedy School and …
Issue: January-February 2020
Reforming the Electoral College
Reed Hundt, the former chairman of the United States Federal Communications Commission and current chairman of Making Every Vote Count , jokes that he has a unique boast. He went to high school and law school with the only two people alive today who …