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Harvard's Latest Field of Expertise: the Semicolon
… A recent public-service ad campaign in the New York City subways used a semicolon in urging riders to dispose of their newspapers rather than leaving them behind on the … ad campaign as an entry point into a broader investigation of the little-used punctuation mark and its cultural …
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
Minding the Gap
… Four days before last Christmas, the $300-billion California Public Employees’ Retirement … plan, announced that it would reduce the expected rate of return on its investments from 7.5 percent to 7 percent. … not small: the state expects its direct pension costs to rise 40 percent, or $2 billion, annually, and plan sponsors …
Issue: May-June 2017
The Black…and the Red
… budget surplus—some $298 million, up from $196 million in the prior year—according to the University’s annual … most recent year now total $769 million—the happy result of the proceeds from the $9.62 billion Harvard Campaign, a … in a uncertain, volatile world. Harvard’s costs will rise as expensive new facilities open, financial aid …
Issue: January-February 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
Family Newsletters of Holidays Past
… On Christmas Day 1948, 28-year-old Marie Harris took to the typewriter in her family’s Shedd, Oregon, farmhouse and … moved three times and had three children in the span of several years, she felt there was “much too much news” … Her first Harris Herald was a three-page update full of the quotidian in all its sweetness: their house had green …
Issue: November-December 2021
The Tao of Crew
… Click-boom-sssshhh. Click-boom-sssshhh --amid the accolades and hardships of academic life, nothing else has so defined my Harvard … up their slides to prepare for the next stroke. Some form of this rhythm is present during every stroke taken by a …
The Payout Payoff
… Following two years of high investment returns on endowment assets, the Harvard Corporation has approved an increase in funds … $840 million). The new formula holds to that 4 percent rise for 2006, but adds an additional sum of up to 4 percent …
Issue: March-April 2005
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 Cell’s Power Plant
… at Harvard for medical school and found that New England weather was like nothing he’d known growing up in Texas, he was … snow. When he arrived, she gave him a towel to dry off. Then, as she made dinner, the storm became a blizzard, … stress of physical exercise. This result didn’t surprise him, because of the numerous adaptive responses to …
Issue: November-December 2018
In Africa, Food vs. Climate?
… known that Africa is a major contributor to rising levels of atmospheric methane, the primary culprit has been a mystery: emissions from the … for the total measured by planes and satellites. This lack of clarity has complicated efforts to reduce emissions of …
Issue: January-February 2025
The Education of a Harvard Lawyer
… In the photograph here, taken on an overcast morning in the fall of 1956, you see the smartest Harvard Law School students in … summer internship positions. And—what a wonderful surprise!—some of them invited me to interview. So much for the …
Issue: January-February 2021
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 Middle Class on the Precipice
… During the past generation, the American middle-class family that … higher costs and increased risks, the old financial rules of credit have been rewritten by powerful corporate … in income has an overlooked side effect: family risk has risen as well. Today’s families have budgeted to the limits …
Issue: January-February 2006
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 …