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The Elitism of Elite Colleges
… with some serious blind spots... High-school students, their parents, and indeed, most of us see receiving a thick envelope from an Ivy League … argues that we may not actually want to go through some of those doors. The writer is William Deresiewicz, a …
A Mind of One’s Own
… poems that continue to entrance and mystify readers across the globe. That table will again be on display at Harvard’s … far more riveting is seeing its replica within the context of her intensely private domain: her bedroom at The Emily … along with the parlor, library, and conservatory, is part of the guided tour that starts as a literary pilgrimage of …
Issue: March-April 2020
Shades of Justice
… J.D. ’81, read an article about two black women who claimed they were fired from jobs at the post office because of discrimination. Her father, who had also … protesting the termination. “I got a note back, which surprised me,” she recalls. “But, of course, he was justifying …
Issue: March-April 2014
Putting the Tea Party in Perspective
… The modern Tea Party , like other political movements before … to cast imported tea into Boston harbor. In a witty account of the uses and abuses of history—mostly for political ends— … influence in American politics, one reason for the rise of the latter-day Tea Party. Even as she points out the …
The Pulse of a New Medical Curriculum
… When he found out he would spend his third year of medical school based at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, rather than rotating among hospital venues every few months, … Babak Nazer knew he’d gain from having an ongoing group of physician mentors at the Harvard-affiliated institution. …
Issue: September-October 2006
Remaking the Grid
… was still a high-school freshman when he learned that one of his crossword puzzles had been accepted for publication by The New York Times . “I was just getting out of gym class,” he recalls, “and I saw the subject line …
Issue: March-April 2019
The Toots of Love
… The second-floor balcony of the central entryway of Grays Hall—in the best of times a …
Debating Divestment in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
… scheduled faculty meeting—which happened to fall on the day after President Donald Trump moved formally to … from the Paris Agreement on climate change—the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) formally docketed “a discussion … of these ice sheets could result in sea level rise of 2 meters by the end of this century and 6 meters by …
The Placebo Phenomenon
… ’s first randomized clinical drug trial, nearly a third of his 270 subjects complained of awful side effects. All the patients had joined the study hoping to alleviate severe … an elaborate set-up in which the doctors lay in fMRI machines specially equipped to enable them both to see their …
Issue: January-February 2013
The Education of a Poker Player
… was less prominent in popular culture than it is today. There wasn’t much commercial poker. New Jersey was a year away from approving casino gambling. Nevada casinos offered poker, but as an afterthought. (The casino business … from the bad players, and the casino gets only a percentage of the pot or a time charge.) Back then, the best …
Issue: March-April 2006
The Roman Theater of Cruelty
… In 1855, there were said to be 420 varieties of plants growing in the … for slaughter in ancient Roman festivals. The survival of African plant species is only one of many remarkable …
The Off-Kilter Economy
… By most measures, the U.S. economy weathered the pandemic recession. But even … growth, for example, that would normally presage a period of prosperity, paired with declining output of goods and … and housing. Less affected are people who own assets, which rise in value during inflationary periods, and homeowners …
Issue: November-December 2022
The “Accidental” Fall of the Berlin Wall
… In 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood in front of Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate, then cut off from the West by the Berlin Wall, and issued a challenge …
The Power of Negative Thinking
… even lucrative, and scientists labor long and hard to get them. Like baseball sluggers stepping up to the plate, many … dread research slumps for good reason: swing and miss too often and maybe your contract, or your funding, won't be … players can't win with bad batting averages, scientists often learn from a good whiff, says Hersey professor of cell …
Issue: January-February 2003
Repairing a Beating Heart
… If there is a holy grail in robotic surgery, it would be … business that can involve temporarily depriving the heart of oxygen, clamping major vessels, and connecting a … to pull three-dimensional images out of existing ultrasound machines in real time, and into our image-processing …
Issue: May-June 2022