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A Second Pulitzer for Colson Whitehead
In 2017, Colson Whitehead ’91 won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his harrowing novel The Underground Railroad, a story that translated that fraught effort to free enslaved people from a historic metaphor to an actual system of tracks and trains …
New Graduate School Dean
Allan M. Brandt has been appointed dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). A professor of the history of science in FAS, Brandt holds a joint appointment as Kass professor of the history of …
Cambridge 02138
Undertreating Chronic Pain Kathleen Koman’s article about pain (“ The Science of Hurt ,” November-December 2005, page 46) brilliantly articulates the science surrounding the subject. The piece, however, does readers a profound disservice in its failure to …
Issue: January-February 2006
The Food Waste Problem
For one of the world’s leading experts on food waste, visiting a grocery store can be frustrating. Stepping into her local Whole Foods, clinical professor of law Emily Broad Leib notices something awry in the store’s first produce display. The unbagged …
Issue: November-December 2021
A Passion for Equity
As an undergraduate studying environmental systems technology at Cornell, Anyeley Hallová, M.L.A. ’03, wanted to give back to the black community. She would travel from Ithaca to her home in South Florida to encourage students from predominantly black …
University People
Heading East Francis J. Doyle III , a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been appointed dean of Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), effective August 1. Doyle, whose research has …
Issue: July-August 2015
Harvard Professor James Hanken on the Amphibian Extinction Crisis
The Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology is one of the oldest museums in the United States–but part of its immense collection remains tucked away, constantly in use but never displayed to the public. Hidden below those towering floors of …
Chapter & Verse
James Wallace seeks to learn the origin of, and find more verses of, parody lyrics for “Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1,” by Edward Elgar. The parody runs, “My chicken has two legs,/Your chicken has none./My chicken can fly high,/Your chicken can’t even …
Issue: March-April 2006
“A 500-Year Building”
When Matt Noblett, a partner in the architecture firm Behnisch Architekten, started working on designs for a biomedically focused research facility in Allston in 2007, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences—many of whose faculty members are now …
Issue: January-February 2021
Re-Wilding Harvard
You might not recognize the front of Harvard’s Museum of Natural History if you haven’t seen it recently. The manicured shrubs that used to occupy the museum’s front planter have been replaced by native species selected by the Rewilding Harvard …
The Places You’ll Go
What links Friendly’s Ice Cream, the Merriam-Webster dictionary, and the Indian motorcycle? Where did the Game of Life, M1 rifle, and Dr. Seuss originate? Here’s a hint: it’s also where the game of basketball was invented during a harsh New England winter …
Issue: November-December 2021
Musician esperanza spalding Departs Harvard
F ive-time Grammy Award winner and professor of practice in the Music Department, esperanza spalding (who does not capitalize her name) will depart the University. In an email to department affiliates last week obtained by Harvard Magazine , the bassist, …
A Sister’s Plea for Her Brother’s Freedom
Before he was placed in solitary confinement in January 2019, Ekpar Asat cut the nails of fellow detainees in a Xinjiang concentration camp for Uighurs, an ethnic minority based in Northwest China. The elderly prisoners’ hands shook too much to do it …
Gender Gains
In the wake of last year’s upheaval over appointing women to professorships in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and the challenges facing women in academic science and engineering (see “ Engineering Equity ,” July-August 2005, page 55), both …
Issue: May-June 2006
Psychedelics for Healing
Psychedelic drugs, once considered primarily recreational, are making their way into clinical settings—and increasingly, helping patients with a range of conditions. Last fall, Harvard launched the Study of Psychedelics in Society and Culture : an …