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On the Margins
Five whitewater kayakers gather on the banks of Peru’s Paucartambo River to deliberate whether to paddle through an especially perilous section of rapids or carry their boats around it. They’re halfway through a 17-day expedition exploring one of the …
Issue: July-August 2025
At Home with Harvard: Health Care in America
This round-up is part of Harvard Magazine’ s series “At Home with Harvard,” a guide to what to read, watch, listen to, and do while social distancing. Read the previous selections, featuring articles about climate change, racial justice, alumni …
The Interim President’s Agenda
Alan M. Garber ’77, Ph.D. ’82, physician and economist, provost since September 2011 , unexpectedly became interim president January 2 , when President Claudine Gay resigned. The shift in physical offices was trivial: a right turn, rather than a left in …
Claudine Gay Announces Racial-Justice Initiatives
As protests about racial equity continue across the country, Claudine Gay, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), announced a series of initiatives to address racial and ethnic equality—including faculty appointments and the addition of an …
Flocking Together
Lila’s Mountain Farm sits in a scenic corner of western Massachusetts, on rolling pastures with sweeping views of the Berkshires. In early February, during lambing season, snowstorms and a cold snap have turned the fields into icy white plateaus. Winds …
Issue: May-June 2025
Faculty Senate Debate Continued
During an unusual special meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) on May 14, members continued the prior week’s lively, engaged discussion of whether to join efforts to explore a University-wide faculty senate . Opinion on the specific proposal …
Eating for the Holidays, the Planet, and Your Heart
As the holiday season approaches , deciding what to put on your plate takes on new significance—not only for your health, but for the health of the planet. Does your Thanksgiving dinner make any difference in the vast and complicated context of greenhouse …
Endowment Gain—and Gaps
The University’s endowment was valued at $37.6 billion on last June 30, the end of fiscal year 2015—a gain of $1.2 billion (3.3 percent) from a year earlier—finally exceeding the peak value (not adjusted for inflation) realized in fiscal 2008, just before …
Issue: November-December 2015
Following Frederick Douglass
Ryan Doan-Nguyen ’25 always felt a particular affinity for the work and activism of Frederick Douglass, the prominent nineteenth-century abolitionist. So when Doan-Nguyen, a resident of Mather House, along with Nicholas Carrero ’23 [’25], of Dunster …
Harvard Football’s Stolen Ivy Title
The Yale Bowl, Nov. 20, 2021. With 26 seconds remaining, Harvard trails Yale 31-27, but the Crimson is knocking at the Eli goal. It is third down and 10 from the Yale 12-yard-line and Harvard, having failed at two pass attempts in the end zone, has a …
Issue: January-February 2022
The Day’s Events: Thursday, May 28
EVENTS FOR Thursday, May 28, include: Gates to Harvard Yard open at 6:45 A.M., and there will be a morning prayer service for graduating seniors at 8 A.M. in Memorial Church. Morning Exercises begin at 9:45 A.M. and include: honorary degree candidates …
A Tale of Two Universities
Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina famously begins, “All happy families are alike but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion.” To abuse that classic brutally, one might say that in flush times, all Ivy League schools seem similar, but at moments of …
Issue: March-April 2021
Jane Rosenzweig
In 2022, Jane Rosenzweig published an op-ed in the Boston Globe, “What We Lose When Machines Do the Writing”—the first of several she’s produced about artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT. The director of the Harvard College Writing Center and a …
Issue: January-February 2025
Harvard Coop’s Changing of the Guard
The Harvard Coop announced today that CEO Jerry Murphy ’73, M.B.A. ’77, will retire on September 1, concluding a Harvard Square career that began when he joined the historic retailer in 1991 after earlier experience at Neiman Marcus. He will be succeeded …
Harvard Reports Top Administrators’ and Investment Managers’ Pay
H arvard today released its 2019 tax filings, covering fiscal year 2020 (July 1, 2019, through June 30, 2020), including information on the earnings of University leaders, and the accompanying Harvard Management Company (HMC) disclosure of senior …