Search
The Trilemma
If scholars’ intellectual interests emerge from their underlying worries, then economist Dani Rodrik’s lifelong preoccupation with the fate of developing countries grew out of his early life in Istanbul. Turkish government trade protections enabled his …
Issue: July-August 2019
The Opioids Emergency
“We are trying to get the house of medicine back in order.” That’s how one emergency-department doctor describes his efforts to rethink his work amid the still-mounting opioid epidemic. The scale of the crisis is almost unimaginable—70,000 lives lost to …
Issue: March-April 2019
Artificial Intelligence and Ethics
On March 18, 2018, at around 10 p.m. , Elaine Herzberg was wheeling her bicycle across a street in Tempe, Arizona, when she was struck and killed by a self-driving car. Although there was a human operator behind the wheel, an autonomous system—artificial …
Issue: January-February 2019
Continuity and Change
Lawrence S. Bacow , J.D.-M.P.P. ’76, Ph.D. ’78, will become the twenty-ninth president of Harvard on July 1. He was elected on Sunday, February 11, by the Corporation, the University’s senior governing board, with the consent of the Board of Overseers, …
Issue: May-June 2018
Cambridge 02138
THE STADIUM'S CENTENNIAL I was initially intrigued by the sidebar "Little Red Flag" in Craig Lambert and John Bethell's " First and 100 " (September-October, page 42). The sidebar listed previous carriers of the flag, this somewhat arcane snippet of …
Issue: November-December 2003
The Provost Meets the Press...
Harvey v. Fineberg '67, M.D. '71, M.P.P. '72, Ph.D. '80, who had served as dean of the School of Public Health since 1984, was appointed University provost in April 1997. He met with editors of Harvard Magazine at Massachusetts Hall late in October to …
The New Histories
In May 1968 , the university’s students wanted to change the world. Left-thinking ideologies like Maoism and socialism were in their minds, and “Vietnam” was on their lips. They went on strike, skipping classes and exams. They rioted and clashed with …
Issue: November-December 2014
Sowing Seeds
An early-November walk along an earthen path in Wakouktaw led around the edge of a paddy—the monsoon rice heavy and ready for harvest—to the small, trig plot where U Win Hlaing and his wife, Daw Than Than Sein, have grown cash crops for the past 22 years: …
Issue: January-February 2014
Popular Science
For thousands of ordinary people around the world, one of biology’s hardest problems is just a game. Both scientists and supercomputers have long struggled to predict the three-dimensional structures of the biological molecules called proteins. These …
Issue: January-February 2014
The Humanities, Digitized
“ If you feel queasy , I can turn this off,” offers Peter Der Manuelian . At the flight controls of a small aircraft, the King professor of Egyptology is following a line of tall palm trees along a causeway that stretches across the Egyptian desert. We’re …
Issue: May-June 2012
Cambridge 02138
Harvard, 375 Years Young At first glance , a 375th anniversary may not seem, as you suggest, as momentous or splashy as a 400th or even a 350th (“ Birthday Greetings ,” September-October, page 5), but it does represent an even three-eighths of a …
Issue: November-December 2011
Cambridge 02138
College Crises In their “Colleges in Crisis” (July-August, page 40), Clayton M. Christensen and Michael B. Horn see an outdated and defective “business model” as chief cause of the financial trouble in which U.S. universities find themselves. But 90 …
Issue: September-October 2011
Professor Video
Near the University of Bologna—the world’s oldest, founded in 1088—is a medieval museum displaying carved memorial plaques that honor great professors of the past. “They all show the professor on the podium, with the students below,” says Thomas Forrest …
Issue: November-December 2009
Seriously Funny
In late 1945, when David Frazier, a freshly minted Ph.D. in chemistry, went home to Ohio on leave from the navy, he interviewed for a job with the chemical research department of Standard Oil of Ohio, known as Sohio. He had to take a psychological test …
Issue: September-October 2008
A Spectrum of Disorders
When Alison finally heard her son Matthew’s diagnosis, she had already spent a night on the Web, terrifying herself, as she puts it, “for the rest of my whole life.” At 18 months, Matthew showed a number of the early warning signs of autism: he didn’t …
Issue: January-February 2008