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Behind the Scenes: The Article-Writing Process
… supporting our work so we can continue to bring you the in-depth and quality reporting behind every article in … . Thank you! Read Nancy’s referenced articles: “ The Happiness Revolutionary ” Arthur Brooks moved beyond policy—to something deeper. “ The Upward Mobility Problem ” Most Americans earn less than …
In the Crosshairs
… During the last election campaign, Donald J. Trump fulminated … investigating campuses, and perhaps challenging the system of accreditation (which determines student eligibility for … reflecting another strain of thought, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) polemicist Max Eden in December called …
Issue: May-June 2025
Mathematics in “The Simpsons”
… The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets, by the British … Simon Singh, illuminates some little-known facets of the popular, long-running TV show. It turns out that several of the writers for The Simpsons and its spinoff series, …
Off the Shelf
… World , by Jack M. Balkin ’78, J.D. ’81 (Harvard, $35). The author, a professor at Yale Law School, turns from questions of … Angeles Times details the disastrous merger of those enterprises, and the even more destructive leveraged buyout of the …
Issue: July-August 2011
The Force Was With Them
… If you were among the 40,000 who saw the 1968 Harvard-Yale game, you sensed an invisible hand shaping the waning minutes of play. Yale’s heavily favored team held a 29-13 lead, but an improbable combination of breaks and derring-do enabled Harvard to score 16 points …
Issue: November-December 2008
The SIGnboard
… As a new academic year begins, the Harvard Alumni Association’s Shared Interest Groups … our webinar series will be delving deep into the topics of farmland investing and big data in agriculture. We will … Harvard community members interested in raising awareness of, and providing education about, various cultural …
Issue: September-October 2014
The Elephant in the Cutting Room
… “Never write from an animal’s perspective,” admonished the fiction-writing manual that Tania James ’03 read while … workshop. At that moment, she realized the magnitude of the risk she had taken in her then recently completed … of a very broad system.” She mentions her initial surprise at learning that the United States is the world’s …
Issue: January-February 2016
"...In My Mind I Am Perplexed"
… The Civil War transformed American society and institutions. It brought about the formal end of slavery (but not of racial discrimination). It empowered … or an ironic anger that may well have shocked and surprised his wife, Isaac Hadden of New York invited her to join …
Issue: January-February 2008
Crows Know How to Have Fun
… Long gone are the days when animal behaviorists, in the tradition of Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner, assumed animals were … Skinner theory to be able to say this, but it’s no surprise that animals experience positive feelings when they do …
Core Curriculum
… Technology and the transformation of identity, community, and commerce … billion a day, then the dollar will fall and interest rates rise, and it may not be pretty unless it happens slowly and …
Your Take: Executive Power and the Law
… its own laws? How should such occurrences be handled after the fact? In this issue's Forum, Charles Fried, Beneficial professor of law at Harvard, and his son Gregory Fried ’83, professor …
Issue: September-October 2010
Termites’ Cathedral Mounds
… mystified scientists. In each colony’s underground nest, the millimeter-sized insects store wood for food, cultivate … when they measured carbon dioxide concentration levels surprised them. Because the top of the mound is hotter than the nest, keeping internal …
Issue: November-December 2015
The Party Is Dead; Long Live the Party
… The undergraduate could scarcely believe his eyes. He looked … the beer had flowed, where the walls had echoed with cries of "Party at the Tack," three students sat eating frozen … is to say, before the Drug-Free Schools and Campuses Act of 1989. That law, which took effect in October 1990, …
Death by the Barrel
… This particular gun story took place, ironically enough, at the 1997 convention of the American Public Health Association in Indianapolis. There, among a group of white-collar professionals and academics, a seemingly …
Issue: September-October 2004
Attend to the Cursed
… at a Harvard podium during Commencement week mentioned the war in Iraq. Joshua Patashnik '07, of Adams House and San Diego, did do so in his Harvard … convinced that their religious beliefs or lack thereof constitute the only acceptable incarnation of absolute …
Issue: July-August 2007