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Making Art Work
At Baltimore’s Johnston Square Elementary School, hundreds of students and staffers pour through the doors twice a day, braving intersections where cars travel up to 80 miles an hour. Nearby, not long ago, a toddler was struck and killed. The crossing …
Issue: September-October 2022
The Context: Universities Pushed to Reckon with Slavery
This is the third post of "The Context"—a biweekly series of archival stories—offering our readers a useful background to some of the most important subjects in the news today. We hope you enjoy it. In the past few years , universities across the country …
Exceeding Expectations
This year marks the 150th anniversary of football at Harvard. (Because the 2020 Ivy League campaign was canceled due to COVID, this is the 149th season of play.) But entering the 2023 season, the outlook for the Crimson was murky. In the century and a …
Issue: November-December 2023
A “Romper Room” Diploma
Speaking at Memorial Church’s semester-opening Morning Prayers today for the first time as Harvard’s president , Claudine Gay continued to tell members of the University community about their new leader. In so doing, she added to the personal details in …
Commencement and Alumni Events
Commencement week includes addresses by interim president Alan M. Garber and journalist and leading free-press advocate Maria Ressa, co-winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. See harvardmagazine.com/commencement for updates. For general information, …
Issue: May-June 2024
Amending Undergraduate Academics
Working its way through an unusually full academic agenda at the faculty meeting on March 1, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) held initial discussions of proposals to change how undergraduates register for courses, allow double concentrations, and …
A Gate of Whimsy
By Harvard standards, the gate outside Lamont Library wasn’t really a gate. “It was just an extension of the fencing,” says Nazneen Cooper, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ assistant dean of campus design and planning. Unlike the Yard’s other notable …
Issue: March-April 2021
A Quartet of Crises
In retrospect, Harvard’s crisis during and after the Great Recession of 2008-2010 was a piece of cake. Yes, the University lost $11 billion to $14 billion in endowment and other assets, and had to incur costly debt, and devote more resources to financial …
Issue: November-December 2020
What the Public—and Teachers—Think About School Choice
Annually since 2007, Education Next, a journal of opinion and research about education policy, has asked a representative sample of U.S. adults for their opinions on a range of education policies. The design provides for a sampling of teachers and African …
Issue: September-October 2016
Blockmate Backstories
This year will mark the second time Harvard hosts its annual Housing Day for first-year students online—last year, in the rush of campus closing, and this year, with more time to prepare. On Friday, the College will reveal each freshman’s assigned House …
Leading with Care
In September 2016, a 4:30 A.M. phone call woke Michael Hill ’93, then general manager of baseball’s Miami Marlins, from a sound sleep. The team’s star pitcher, 24-year-old José Fernández, was dead. The young man was more than a player to Hill—the pair had …
Issue: March-April 2024
Championship Complications
On a Sunday morning in late January 2009, the Harvard men’s basketball team gathered at Lavietes Pavilion, anxious about what awaited them. After toppling Boston College earlier that month—the program’s first victory over a ranked opponent—the Crimson had …
Issue: March-April 2015
Changemaker in Admissions
The fourth of seven children, David L. Evans grew up in Arkansas in one of the nation’s poorest counties. His grandmother was born into slavery, and his parents, who died before Evans graduated from high school, were sharecroppers with little formal …
Issue: September-October 2020
Harvard Responds to Congressional Endowment Queries
Republican members of the United States Congress have periodically sought to jawbone endowed private colleges and universities into spending more of their income and assets—particularly on undergraduate financial aid, and sometimes for other purposes. …
Thank You For Reading
Harvard Magazine , founded by alumni, continues to operate as an entirely independent, journalistic nonprofit enterprise devoted to serving readers, keeping you connected with six print issues annually and much additional online reporting on our …