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“The Wise Person Learns from All People”
… seniors, President Lawrence S. Bacow recalled that in the fall of 2019, he had told this class at their freshman convocation that “Anyone who is thinking of the next four years as a series of stepping stones to a …
Harvard Reflects on the “Meanings of Mandela”
… Standing at the podium in Sanders Theatre yesterday, Nobel laureate and … Soyinka, Litt.D. ’93, recalled learning about the passing of former South African president and anti-apartheid hero … “When I was asked for my reaction, I said, ‘The soul of Africa has departed, and there is nothing miraculous left …
“You Can Correct the Mistakes of My Generation”
… Drawing on his own success in brokering a peace treaty with the guerilla army FARC, ending five decades of civil war, former president of Colombia and Nobel … anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela, saying “We must ‘rise above the parochial concepts of nation, race, and …
Title IX and the Critique of the Neoliberal University
… The debate around sexual-assault policy, at Harvard and … a more limited role for universities in the private lives of students, and worry, during a moment of national outrage at college sexual violence, that …
Purse Strings of the Heart
… Odysseus struggled to resist the Sirens. Adam Smith warned of dangerous passions for … irrational. But to Laibson, credit-card borrowing is no surprise. His behavioral model, which applies "hyperbolic …
Issue: September-October 2001
The Sorcery of Seedpods
… In his 2001 book The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan declared that the existential dilemma of a plant is its immobility. “It can’t pursue a mate, or a …
Issue: January-February 2014
Work in the Key of Life
… teacher,” says Cynthia Ann Piltch ’74, “I would have said, ‘There’s a better chance of the pope becoming Jewish.’ I am a scientist. The idea of … Boston College. The number of older workers is also on the rise; the study found that 75 percent of workers who are 50 …
Issue: January-February 2011
The Great Global Experiment
… During a recent Alaska study cruise cosponsored by the Harvard Museum of Natural History, James J. McCarthy stopped at several … Canada, during the same period, temperatures have already risen 4 to 7 degrees. That impact dramatically illustrates a …
Issue: November-December 2002
What the Meaning of the Word "Is" Is
… Man of letters (and movies, and newspapers, and television) … on Francis Avenue in Cambridge. Especially luminous members of the Harvard faculty have houses all around him. Kaplan …
Off the Shelf
… A Sea of Glass, by Drew Harvell (University of California, $29.95). The Blaschkas, of glass-flowers fame, first modeled marine … in late medieval Marseille and Lucca reveals the rise of the modern consumer economy, with valuables enmeshed …
Issue: July-August 2016
“Fear and Anger Are the Essential Ingredients of Injustice”
… Stevenson , J.D.-M.P.A.’85, LL.D. ‘15, went straight to the point at the start of his remote Harvard Law School (HLS) Class Day speech … to have to change narratives.” He talked about the dramatic rise of mass incarceration in the United States—”Our prison …
The Ascent of Man
… Perhaps the last time biology had it together, at least in the … Clinton in the White House to declare the draft sequence of the human genome complete. “Without a doubt, this is the … other diseases—obesity, allergies, depression—are on the rise, less-welcome products of the technological progress …
Issue: July-August 2015
Home of the Humanities
… she sketches an alternate history, one that competes with the common account that the Byzantine empire’s inhabitants … than their contemporaries in their use and understanding of the sciences. Mavroudi reports that Ptolemy’s Geography , … help. The new library building cost $18 million and comprises 43,000 square feet. The museums, closed for …
Issue: May-June 2008
The Road to Romance
… "I'm at that age where I'm crossing the threshold from high-school-fantasy concepts of romance to the brutal, painful, hopeless world of adult … into the broader sexual revolution, which in time gave rise to coed dormitories and the contemporary notion that …
Issue: March-April 2003
The Art of Lighting and Sound Design
… The Act One finale of In the Heights is the stuff of theater technicians’ dreams andnightmares. After a … A Roman candle sound soars while a corresponding pink light rises over the actors’ faces. Everything is perfectly, …
Issue: January-February 2023