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Both Sides Now
Tomiko Brown-Nagin is a legal historian of what she calls “one of the most celebrated social movements of all time—the black freedom struggle.” Two photographs sit on a bookcase behind her desk at Greenleaf House, the residence of the Harvard Radcliffe …
Issue: January-February 2022
The End of Shopping Week
During their last regular meeting of the academic year, on May 3, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted by a 3:2 margin to replace the “shopping” period—the beginning-of-term week in which students sample courses before making their selections—with a …
Issue: July-August 2022
Governing Boards Change Composition of Overseers
As three newly elected members nominated by petition and elected after campaigning vigorously as part of the Harvard Forward slate joined the Board of Overseers, it and the Harvard Corporation have voted to enact changes in the election process and the …
Portraying Lawrence H. Summers
Last Friday afternoon , September 23, the official portrait of Lawrence H. Summers was unveiled during a celebratory tribute in the Widener Library rotunda, 16-plus years after his departure from Massachusetts Hall. (This and future presidential portraits …
Boosting Teacher Training
Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) —renowned for research spanning early-childhood learning and college accessibility, and for training education leaders and policymakers—is making major progress on its redesigned program to equip teachers for …
Celebrating Alumni, Anew
Plans are underway to create “exciting, dynamic programming” for the Harvard Alumni Association’s (HAA) newly reorganized annual meeting on June 3, according to executive director Philip Lovejoy. The decision to move the 152 nd meeting, traditionally held …
Issue: January-February 2022
Cambridge 02138
Harvard Law I read with keen interest “ The Education of a Harvard Lawyer ” (January-February, page 38) by Nancy Boxley Tepper, my classmate. As I recall, she was one of five women in the class and I was one of three blacks. I noted with interest her …
Issue: March-April 2021
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 …
How Harvard’s Professional Schools Will Cope with the Economic Crisis
In the wake of initial financial guidance and principles for drafting new budgets disseminated by President Lawrence S. Bacow and the central administration on April 13, Harvard’s faculties are learning from their deans what the pandemic-related …
Dumebi Menakaya Shoots Secrecy
Dumebi Malaika Menakaya ’s Nzuzo I initially appears as a reflection, but it’s not. In the photograph, two women with short, curly hair and long lashes face each other, heads angled just slightly, chests touching, lips inches apart. One woman places her …
Issue: March-April 2023
Off the Shelf
Learning to Depolarize: Helping Students and Teachers Reach Across Lines of Disagreement, by Kent Lenci, Ed.M. ’05 (Routledge, $29.95 paper). Drawing on two decades of experience in middle schools, the author crafts a surprisingly warm and hopeful …
Issue: March-April 2023
Governance Reform from Below?
The last item discussed at the May 7 Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) meeting may, in time, rank first in importance: a motion, introduced by Conant University Professor Danielle Allen , brought forth with seven colleagues, that the faculty elect …
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
The Context: Daniel Lieberman on Food Addiction
Pick any popular subject in the news and it’s likely Harvard Magazine has covered it. With access to so many leading scholars, we’re often able to delve into topics in health, science, law, and the humanities before they reach the mainstream. This is the …
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 …