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Harvard’s Finances in a Challenging Year
Harvard’s annual financial report for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2024, published today—an academic year of campus tumult, an overturned presidency, and speculation about the resulting effects on alumni and donor support—reveals some new strains …
Jonathan Shaw , John S. Rosenberg
"Resizing," before "Reshaping"
No weekday hot breakfasts in House dining halls. Continued constraint on faculty appointments (a total of just 15 to 19 junior-faculty searches in 2009-2010, down from as many as several dozen in recent years), and severe limits on visiting faculty, …
Issue: July-August 2009
Citing Recession, Yale Makes Deeper Cuts
In a letter disseminated to Yale faculty and staff members on February 24 , that university's president, Richard C. Levin, outlined "a more aggressive approach to budget reductions for the coming fiscal year" than he disclosed last December 16 , when he …
“Be Unlikely Inseparables”
“Class Day does not traditionally include a moment like this,” said senior program marshal Tarina Ahuja ’24 an hour into this year’s Class Day ceremony. “But we’re also not living in a typical moment.” After earlier speakers referenced the class of 2024’s …
Harvard Records $130-Million Deficit in Fiscal 2011
Harvard reported a $130-million operating deficit in the fiscal year ended last June 30—about 3 percent of total expenditures—according to the Harvard University Financial Report released on October 28. Although the report characterized the deficit as …
Remembering Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan
Editor’s note : Meg Campbell ’74, an educator—she is the retired cofounder of the Codman Academy Charter Public School—lives in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. She submitted this essay after attending her fiftieth reunion this past spring. I read …
Radcliffe Celebrates 25
When Mary Ingraham Bunting-Smith became president of Radcliffe College in 1960, she sought to combat what she called “a national climate of unexpectation” surrounding women’s education. As part of that mission, she created the Radcliffe Institute for …
AI in the Academy
Generative artificial intelligence, which can write prose and computer code, generate audio, and create images, within the past year has become capable of producing work indistinguishable from that of humans. Generative AI, given the right prompts, can …
Issue: November-December 2023
Spotlight Travel
New England has a variety of State Parks that make for perfect day trips. Here are some ideas to consider for a summer stop. Gillette Castle State Park 67 River Road East Haddam, CT 06423 860-526-2336 Website It looks like a medieval fortress, but a step …
Omnia Mea Mecum Porto
Last year , Ronnie Mae Weiss and her husband, Richard Sobol, moved out of their longtime Lexington, Massachusetts, home, where a lovely stream ran through the backyard. Now in Cambridge, they live in a townhouse about half their old home’s size, lacking …
Issue: July-August 2012
Ripening Nicely
Soon Harvard’s sidewalk superintendents will turn their attention to Allston because that’s where the hardhats will go. For the next 50 years, idle observers will oversee workers as they erect 10 million square feet of buildings there and increase the …
Issue: May-June 2007
Studying Zika
To understand the outbreak of a disease like Zika, and ultimately to fight it, researchers must work on multiple levels. There are questions of molecules and chemical processes: how does the virus infect a cell, and what components provoke an immune …
Out with the Sake, in with the Ale
A colleague once faulted Stephen Owen for using the word "flagon" in his translation of a Tang dynasty text. Standard translations parsed the character in question as "cup" and the liquid it held as wine, or sake. But the text at issue describes killing …
Back to the Bond Market...
Harvard is in the process of issuing $730 million of tax-exempt revenue bonds and $300 million of taxable revenue bonds. As a result, total debt outstanding will rise from $6.3 billion at the end of the last fiscal year (June 30) to $6.6 billion, …
Pioneer Valley Bounty
For Milwaukee chef and restaurateur Sanford D’Amato, the move to Massachusetts’s Pioneer Valley turned not on the providential bite of an apple, but of a ridiculously juicy peach. It was in 2007, when he and his wife Angie were visiting friends who …
Issue: July-August 2024