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Fraught Finances
Amid an historic expansion, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) must now come to terms with the costs of its growth. An anticipated deficit of $40 million-plus in the fiscal year ending this June 30 was disclosed at the January 10 faculty meeting; that …
Issue: March-April 2006
Graduate School of Design Class Day Speaker Danielle S. Allen
Conant University professor Danielle S. Allen grew up in a large, “politically committed” extended family in 1970s Southern California. “Almost as if with mother’s milk,” she told an audience at the Graduate School of Design’s Class Day, “we took in the …
Sarah Ganz Blythe New Art Museums Director
Sarah Ganz Blythe , deputy director, exhibitions, education, and programs at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum (RISD), has been appointed Cabot director of the Harvard Art Museums effective August 12, interim provost John Manning announced today. …
Harvard’s NBA Champion
For a couple of years now, the Harvard men’s basketball team and Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokić have carried on a playful social-media exchange, ever since he kidded in a 2021 pregame radio show that he’d attended the College. (In fact, the …
Lessons in Dementia’s Decline?
Public-health officials have for years been warning of a coming “gray wave” of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Today, an estimated 47 million people worldwide live with the disorder. That cohort is expected to triple in the next three …
Issue: November-December 2020
Immigrant Workers— America’s Engine?
Immigration is one of the most polarizing issues of the 2024 presidential election campaign—but not a new point of contention in America politics. From the late nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, waves of immigrants, mainly from Europe, …
The "King of Palindromes"
“Kay fixes trapeze part; sex if yak…” was a promising start, but now palindromist Mark Saltveit ’83 needed one final, reversible word—one that would convey Kay’s questionable character and the conditions under which a yak would engage in adult activities. …
Issue: September-October 2021
Bias in Artificial Intelligence
One of the more startling and instructive documentaries of the recent past is 2020’s Coded Bias , which explores a thorny dilemma: in modern society, artificial-intelligence systems increasingly govern and surveil people’s lives—algorithms now routinely …
Online Takes Off
The pandemic’s effects on classroom teaching were immediate and binary: given the dangers of viral transmission, courses last March were hurriedly adapted to Zoom, and, last fall, more refined versions of online pedagogy appeared (see “School Goes …
Issue: March-April 2021
Harvard Medalists
Avarita L. Hanson Avarita L. Hanson ’75 in 1975 founded what’s now known as the Association of Black Harvard Women (ABHW), and has served as treasurer of the Harvard and Radcliffe Class of 1975, president of the Harvard Club of Georgia, Harvard Alumni …
Issue: July-August 2022
Harvard in the Interim
Harvard ’s new normal began to take shape during the spring semester. New Corporation fellows were appointed (see “News in Brief,” this issue, page 23). Long-time provost Alan M. Garber, who had moved a few yards within Massachusetts Hall on January 2, …
Issue: May-June 2024
On Public Notice
Some might doubt that anyone reads those paragraphs of dense text that appear toward the back of the newspaper: the ones that contain information about ordinances, meetings, petitions, foreclosures, municipal budgets, and other official proceedings that …
Harvard Medalists
The Harvard Alumni Association has recognized three individuals as the 2020 Harvard Medalists, honoring their extraordinary service to the University. (The actual medal presentation, typically part of the HAA’s annual meeting on Commencement day, has been …
Issue: July-August 2020
Faculty Member Remarks at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Meeting, March 15, 2005
William C. Kirby, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences I'd like to say a few words about governance before we begin today's discussion. We meet for the third time in five weeks, and I must tell you, and not for the first time, that it is …
Harvard University's 369th Commencement Excercises
Thursday, May 28, 2020 commencement.harvard.edu Since 1642, when just nine students graduated, Harvard’s Commencement Exercises have brought together the community unlike any other tradition still observed in the University. Degree candidates with …
Issue: March-April 2020