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"Knitt Together...As One"
I stand honored by your trust, inspired by your charge. I am grateful to the Governing Boards for their confidence, and I thank all of you for gathering in these festival rites. I am indebted to my three predecessors, sitting behind me, for joining me …
Issue: November-December 2007
Installation Address
Drew Faust gave the following address for her installation as Harvard’s 28th president on Friday, Oct. 12, 2007. To view additional coverage of the Installation festivities, including additional audio recordings and an exclusive slideshow, see our special …
Cambridge 02138
Justice Breyer A comment from an uninformed foreigner. It seems to me that the U.S. Supreme Court is the very insurance that the government reflects what people want, to some extent anyway, that many foreigners look on with envy (“ A Workable Democracy ,” …
Issue: May-June 2017
Cambridge 02138
DNA Drawing Your discussion of using gene drives to combat malaria was very even-handed (“ Editing an End to Malaria? ” May-June, page 37); but DNA is, and must be, right-handed in the twist of its helix. Alas, on your very clever cover illustration it is …
Issue: July-August 2016
The War and the Writ
Huzaifa Parhat, a fruit peddler, has been imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay Detention Center for the last seven years. He is not a terrorist. He’s a mistake, a victim of the war against al Qaeda. An interrogator first told him that the military knew he was not …
Issue: January-February 2009
The Sesquicentennial All-Crimson Team
Harvard is celebrating the 150th anniversary of Crimson football. To commemorate the occasion, we have undertaken the daunting task of choosing the greatest players in the program’s history. (A tough job, but someone had to do it.) Our panel includes four …
Issue: November-December 2023
Graduate School of Design Launches $110-Million Campaign
The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) launched its $110-million-plus fundraising campaign on September 12 and 13 with a series of events highlighting the school’s “grounded visionaries”: architects, planners, and designers who are at once free to …
Investing vs. Harvesting
Pforzheimer professor of teaching and learning Richard J. Light likely knows about more American colleges and universities—small and large, public and private—than any other scholar of higher education. He has met with the leaders, trustees, faculty and …
Richard J. Light , Allison Jegla
Issue: July-August 2022
How Same-Sex Marriage Came to Be
Fifty years ago, every state criminalized homosexual sex, and even the American Civil Liberties Union did not object. The federal government would not hire people who were openly gay or permit them to serve in the military. Police routinely raided gay …
Issue: March-April 2013
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Fie on Al Franken Your fawning feature article on the aggressive and obnoxious Al Franken was extremely ill taken (" Al Franken: You Can Call Me Senator "). Franken, whose ideas and value system are comprehensively wrong, is an embarrassment to everyone, …
Issue: May-June 2012
Getting Close, in Selma
Drew Gilpin Faust , then dean of the Radcliffe Institute, turned her historian’s lens on herself in “Living History” (May-June 2003), an account of her Virginia girlhood in the 1950s, amid intense resistance to implementing the Supreme Court’s ruling in …
Issue: September-October 2023
The Way of the Critic
In 2012, New York Times film critic Anthony “Tony” Scott ’87 (writing under his byline, A.O. Scott) reviewed a big Hollywood release, The Avengers . He praised some aspects of the movie and bemoaned others, specifically “its sacrifice of originality on …
Issue: November-December 2019
The Science of Sex
The “Sins of the Mother,” trumpets a headline in the journal Science , warning of a “maternal assault” against children. Another headline calls mothers “smoking guns,” the source of incalculable harm. What wrongs have these mothers committed? Not any sort …
Issue: November-December 2019
A World of Literature
The résumé of Harvard’s Bernbaum professor of comparative literature might create the impression that “comp lit” means “the study of any literature from anywhere, ever.” At various points in his career, David Damrosch has written about the epic of …
Issue: September-October 2019
The Eugenic Temptation
The full-page advertisement in the Harvard Crimson a year ago came as no surprise. The text was straightforward: Intelligent, Athletic Egg Donor Needed For Loving Family. You must be at least 5´ 10´´ / Have a 1400+ SAT score / Possess no major family …