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Concentration Complications
… Of all the difficult decisions one confronts as an undergraduate, the selection of concentration is perhaps the hardest. Fortunately, it is … intellectual work, and the deepest paradigm shifts often arise from interdisciplinary cross-pollination.” Through its …
Issue: November-December 2007
Overheated Rhetoric
… Michael Crichton '64, M.D. '69, State of Fear (HarperCollins, $27.95). Michael Crichton's State of Fear is less a novel than a forum for the author to rail against what he perceives as … about 0.1 degree, between 1940 and 1970. Temperatures have risen steadily since 1970, climbing by as much as 0.5 degree …
Issue: March-April 2005
Update: Help for Haiti
… January 18, six days after Haiti's devastating earthquake, the Center for Geographic Analysis gave wall maps printed at … help the country turn to rebuilding. They received evidence of this sooner than they'd anticipated: a week later, the … up in a photograph in a BU publication. It showed two of the BU delegation leaders, Jean-Lucien Ligondé and …
Jeannie Suk Gersen: Do Elite Colleges Discriminate Against Asian Americans?
… Decades of Supreme Court precedent says colleges can use affirmative action in admissions—but the court's new composition could change all that. In this … times the rate of everyone else. That group together comprises a third of each class. ALDCs are athletes, legacies, …
Self-Fashioning in Society and Solitude
… Editor’s note: Each spring term since 2008, Hobbs professor of cognition and education Howard E. Gardner and … teaching and learning Richard J. Light —in cooperation with the Freshman Dean’s Office and a group of facilitators—have … shows no curiosity when he does. He needs no instruments or machines; his own strength is fully sufficient for his …
Issue: September-October 2013
Readying for a Reckoning
… expert Sara Bleich stepped into a newly created role at the University, as vice provost for special projects, … by the Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery. This week, Bleich spoke with Harvard Magazine … and how she sees this work progressing. “This is the kind of project,” she said, “that has the ability to change …
Can Harvard Advance Social Justice and Inclusion?
… to confront social justice, and particularly racism, on their campuses—a challenge that has been expressed, at … attempted to draw attention to racism at Harvard. For much of last semester, a group of law students calling themselves Reclaim Harvard Law …
Harvard College Admissions Rate Falls to 5.9 Percent
… College announced today that 2,032 applicants had been offered admission to the class of 2016, entering this August—5.9 percent of 34,302 …
Arts and Sciences Aspirations
… The new academic structure created by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) in the summer of 2003 has yielded its twin first fruits. The divisional …
Issue: January-February 2005
DRAGONfly
… When Harvard curator of fossil insects Frank M. Carpenter dug up this wing in an Oklahoma prairie in 1940, he held a piece of the first evidence that insects had once been gigantic. The …
Issue: November-December 2007
Is Vitamin D a Wonder Pill?
… “In the case of religion, we put our faith in gods. And in nutrition, we have vitamins,” writes journalist Catherine Price in Vitamania, in which she traces vitamin … absorption and play an essential role in bone health, it’s often added to dairy products. More recent studies, linking …
Issue: May-June 2015
Celebrating Alice
… One and a half centuries after Alice first fell down the rabbit hole, she has arrived at one of Cambridge’s most serious places: Houghton Library, … of doses of LSD. The exhibition is full of pleasant surprises and clever details: all case labels are designed as …
Ethics in Practice
… Every Tuesday afternoon at the Kennedy School of Government, over lunch, a group of 10 … weigh ethical considerations every day as new situations arise. The center supports programs that exercise …
Issue: May-June 2007
Profiling, Good and Bad
… It's the beginning of a holiday weekend, and the line through the airport security checkpoint is backed … the country. Although many Americans considered such "profiling" unjust, others considered it fair and based on …
Issue: January-February 2004
FAS Dean Smith Confirms Scientific Misconduct by Marc Hauser
… Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) dean Michael D. Smith today issued a statement to colleagues, confirming the investigation of and findings of scientific misconduct … staff. In brief, when allegations of scientific misconduct arise, the FAS Standing Committee on Professional Conduct …