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Cambridge 02138
The Death Penalty I am not familiar with the Steikers’ work, other than through the comprehensive article in the November-December 2016 issue (“ Death Throes ,” by Lincoln Caplan, page 56). However, over the years (I suppose like most lawyers), I have …
Issue: January-February 2017
Further Undisclosed E-mail Investigations Revealed at Harvard
In a tense Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) meeting this afternoon, Michael D. Smith, the dean, revealed that additional “concerning actions”—further investigations of e-mail accounts—had been undertaken last fall during the Administrative Board (AB) …
Final Clubs: Toward a Vote
This afternoon, at its second meeting of the semester, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) continued the protracted debate over unrecognized single-gender social organizations (USGSOs)—namely, proposals by Harvard College to regulate final clubs (and …
“Feelings Ought to Be Investigated”
“Jane Austen’s Fiction and Fans” is a class so well-liked that its instructor has been forced to put it on pause. “It grew so much in my first two years at Harvard that it has almost become too big to do it anymore,” says Deidre Lynch, Bernbaum professor …
Issue: January-February 2017
Harvard Faculty Debate Final Club Sanctions
Yesterday's regular meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) took up a contentious topic: whether undergraduates have a right to join single-gender social organizations, including final clubs, sororities and fraternities, without penalty. At …
William C. Kirby: Is China Ready for Leadership on the Global Stage?
China is the most populous country on Earth , and until a few hundred years ago, it was also the most economically powerful. Today, China is ascendant on the world stage . What does its government seek in its relationship with the United States? Do …
The American Exception
Historian R.H. Tawney famously explored the ties between Protestantism and economic development in Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926). Now, nearly a century later, in a new book under the same title, Maier professor of political economy Benjamin …
Issue: January-February 2021
The Campaign Co-Chairs
The University-level leadership of The Harvard Campaign (which was unveiled during campus events at Memorial Church, Sanders Theatre, and Harvard Stadium on September 21) includes nine co-chairs and three honorary co-chairs. Each Harvard school’s …
A Higher Degree of Responsibility
Editor’s note: Amid rising concerns about economic inequality, climate change, and riven politics, the role of capitalist enterprise has come into question—at least when defined solely in terms of maximizing profitability. Even such modest notions as …
Issue: March-April 2023
The Psyche on Automatic
Though snap judgments get no respect, they are not so much a bad habit as a fact of life. Our first impressions register far too quickly for any nuanced weighing of data: “Within less than a second, using facial features, people make what are called …
Issue: November-December 2010
The Mindfulness Chronicles
In 1981, early in her career at Harvard, Ellen Langer and her colleagues piled two groups of men in their seventies and eighties into vans, drove them two hours north to a sprawling old monastery in New Hampshire, and dropped them off 22 years earlier, in …
Issue: September-October 2010
Picture-Perfect
Commencements, the sages say, are beginnings . About to receive diplomas certifying that the world is now their oyster, the joyful graduates-to-be agree, mostly. But they also lament the endings : the loss of liberty that comes with student life, the …
Cambridge 02138
Multimedia Matters “ Professor Video ,” by Craig Lambert ( November-December 2009, page 34 ) left me mildly depressed. Not because I teach here, but because my college-bound daughter is considering applying here. When she was in public school, her parents …
Issue: January-February 2010
Harvard's Annual Financial Report Fully Details 2009 Losses
Updated The Harvard University Financial Report for fiscal year 2009 , published October 16, contains more than the usual amount of dramatic material, headlined by the $11-billion loss of endowment wealth —the most important factor driving budget …
Lawrence Lessig: What Leads to Academic Corruption?
There’s a kind of academic corruption that most people have never considered. Not plagiarism. Not cheating on an exam. This is the kind of corruption that occurs when corporations and industry lobbying groups pay academics for expert testimony before …