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Commencement Address by John Lithgow ’67: “An Actor's Own Words”
by John Lithgow '67, Ar.D. '05 Mr. President, faculty, graduates, families, and friends, good afternoon and thank you for the honor of addressing you all today. This speech is a major event in my own personal history but an interesting little footnote …
A Faculty Meeting “Unlike Any Other”
The president in an open-collared shirt and pullover. The dean of the College sporting headphones. A peak of 271 participants logged in ( a huge number for a faculty meeting )—perhaps eager to see colleagues, hear more about the dismal University …
This Old (Red) House
For most of its 202-year history, the cottage at 98 Winthrop Street has been a private residence. A year ago, Paul Overgaag, owner of the now defunct Giannino in the Charles Hotel courtyard, turned the crimson clapboard home into a notable new dining …
Issue: July-August 2004
At 75, Murray Dewart Reflects on His Career as a Sculptor
Murray Dewart ’70, a Boston-raised sculptor, was born into a family of three generations of clergymen but always knew he wanted to be an artist. It wasn’t until he found the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts during his junior year at Harvard and threw …
Issue: March-April 2024
The Homelessness Public Health Crisis
For Shawn Pleasants, the descent into homelessness wasn’t so much a plummet as an awful, incomprehensible slide. It was hard at first to even grasp the basic reality. “We lived in my Ford Explorer for a little over a year before I was willing to admit …
Issue: May-June 2024
Peabody Museum Discovers Possible Slave Remains in Its Collections
The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology has found among its holdings the remains of 15 people of African descent who were likely alive when slavery was legal in the United States, University president Lawrence S. Bacow announced in an email today. …
Fresh Takes on the Caribbean
The multimedia exhibition “Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s-Today,” at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, through February 25, opens with a bold tapestry. From across the room, Suchitra Mattai’s 2022 An Ocean Cradle could be a …
Issue: January-February 2024
Polishing off Plastic Pollution?
“There’s a great future in plastics.” The iconic line, advice to a fresh-from-college ingenué played by Dustin Hoffman in the 1967 film The Graduate , was intended for laughs. But in 2023, it highlights a grim reality. The world’s economies generate …
Issue: September-October 2023
Charles Lieber Arrested
Charles Lieber, chair of Harvard’s department of chemistry and chemical biology, and a University Professor , a designation bestowed on only the most eminent scholars, has been arrested, charged with misleading investigators from the Department of …
A New Prescription for Drug Development
Almost all the drugs that physicians prescribe to cure diseases or treat specific medical conditions were discovered by trial and error, and the way they work is frequently not well understood. But that outmoded discovery process and the lack of …
Off the Shelf
The Art of Cloth in Mughal India , by Sylvia Houghteling ’06 (Princeton, $65). To wide public knowledge of Mughal masterpieces in painting and architecture, Houghteling now adds comprehensive appreciation of the textiles created and traded at the height …
Issue: July-August 2022
Benjamin Porteous, Latin Salutatory
In Honorem Iohannis Martini Annenbergensis Praeses Bacow, Decani, Professores doctissimi, Hospites ter-honorati, Alumni Alumnaeque eminentissimae, pro nobis permulta passae familiae, et praecipue vosmet, condiscipuli carissimi, salvete! …
Harvard-Cambridge Scholarships
Four seniors have won Harvard-Cambridge Scholarships to study at Cambridge University during the 2022-23 academic year. Jack Swanson, of Currier House, a government concentrator, will be the Lionel de Jersey Harvard Scholar at Emmanuel College. Sorcha …
Issue: July-August 2022
A Victory—and a Campaign
Dean Michael D. Smith’s annual report for fiscal year 2012 —previewed with Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) colleagues at their October 2 meeting and published two days later—declares victory and outlines a future campaign. The retrospective victory …
Issue: November-December 2012
Francesca Dominici: How Does Air Pollution Affect COVID-19?
How does the air we breathe affect our body’s reaction to COVID-19? Early on in the pandemic Francesca Dominici, Gamble professor of biostatistics, population, and data science at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, explored this question …